#213 -Dick Bernard: Have they no shame?

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Most of my working career I represented public school teachers in union matters like negotiations and grievance processing. It was a powerful learning experience in realism. Ideals collided with unpleasant realities. Even people on the same side of an issue were frequently in conflict about how to approach the problem. My world was full of shades of gray, created by people on sides who were sure that they were right, and the other wrong. I learned lots of lessons with ‘boots on the ground’ in those 27 years. It was a invaluable experience.
I also learned the tactics of the black art of advocacy communication, particularly how to sift a grain of truth out of a mound of – shall I say – BS. Advocates were trained in how to mislead by seeming to be sincere and truthful; they learned how people in authority escape and evade accountability by saying nothing at all…at least nothing with a paper trail.
Nonetheless, I was ill-prepared for the slap in the face of the middle class and working people generally that I saw in Bob Herbert’s column in the July 31, 2010, New York Times. The column speaks profoundly for itself. I hope you read it and really think about it.
The gist of the column: the recession as measured by economists has been over for a year; American business is bloated with Profit, but in no hurry to put its employees back to work, helping to alleviate unemployment; nor to bring back middle class wages; or to allow the re-enablement of the abundant benefits of good government. The worst crisis since the Great Depression is being exploited as an economic opportunity.
Why?
These are days of sophisticated communication – and mis-communication, and non-communication – so any theory advanced by some peasant like myself can and will be denied. Even “smoking guns” can be denied, plausibly, by the smooth pitch-people for business and industry. Communication – and non-Communication – techniques are highly refined.
But let me pose a possibility in this particular outrage as outlined in Mr. Herbert’s column:
A key to restoring American confidence in its recovery is more people at work, particularly in well-paying jobs. It is private or public sector employers who need to put these people back to work. No job. No work.
More people at work should be a no-brainer, since business depends on people who have money to spend. But American big business, especially, is chafing at any sense of loss experienced at the hands of a new American political administration. This “loss” comes in the face of re-regulation after many years experience with the unmitigated disaster of de-regulation. The titans had their chance at a de-regulated environment, and failed miserably.
Their loss comes coincident with the need to re-tool industry practices to make possible new approaches to other looming catastrophes like traditional energy depletion, climate change, etc. Business has no problem with these things, and likely knows the implications of doing nothing, but will not move to support these changes until it is in a position to control the policy and corner the profits.
The key to regaining complete political control is seen as keeping common people angry – against the very government they depend on. The very people big business relies on to feed this anger are the very people it is cynically keeping out of the work force for political advantage. They will be relied on, in a few months, to vote the “in’s” out, and bring back in power the very people who caused the catastrophe in the first place.
Read the article, and give it some serious thought.
No one in the big business world is going to be caught dead saying that Economic Depression is good for Profit. But the data is pretty troubling.
In the long run, we will all, including Big Business, sink in our own excess. But not to worry…we will probably be dead before that happens, and other people down the line – our children and grandchildren – will pay the price.
We are, truly, “spending our kids inheritance”.
We ought to be ashamed, the “fat cats” especially so.

#212 – Dick Bernard: "Free Lunch"?

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Last week my wife was in conversation with a neighbor down the street. “Georgie” is a good neighbor, a nice person: one of those people you hope will be in your neighborhood.
But she’s not one to rely on if you’re in some other neighborhood. She has boundaries. In her sphere, there is only one side to any story: the one she chooses to believe.
This particular day Georgie was sharing her apocalyptic vision of January, 2011, when the twin evils of huge tax increases and “Obamacare” are to take effect. She was speaking, of course, about what she’d heard about Health Care Reform, and the pending Sunset on the Bush-era tax cuts. She, a never married retired single lady of Medicare age and moderate means who chooses her own information and associations, was horrified by the twin prospects of approaching financial Armageddon. She believed what she’d been told.
As it happened, the very next day came a forwarded e-mail from somebody in Arkansas who calls himself “Dr. Larry”. He is one of these folks who has a computer and knows how to forward stuff to a personal list. Most of what he sends is either false or wildly inaccurate, and it is always hate-Obama or hate-Democrats oriented. Sometimes I take a shot back, but it’s a waste of cyber-energy.
The “doctor’s” screed this particular day was about the evil of sunsetting the Bush tax cuts. His forward came from the anti-tax outfit founded by Grover Norquist, whose goal is, essentially, to demolish government (except for certain things like “defense”). Norquists most famous quote: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”
It could fairly be said that Norquist was a prime architect of the Bush tax-cuts, so his groups news release was extraordinarily self-serving. Of course, the name on the groups letterhead did nothing to identify who it actually represented – but that is another story.
The two pieces of information, from Georgie and Dr. Larry, caused me to look into this business of taxes from a personal perspective.
I am a very ordinary middle class type. I have also kept every tax return I have ever filed – now nearing 50 of them, all in a big box in chronological order – easy to research.
I decided to dig out my 1999 and 2009 tax returns, to see what had happened to my state and federal taxes in those years.
For all of us, personal circumstances change, and the same is true for me. But it was possible for me to establish something of an “apples to apples” comparison between 1999 and 2009.
Succinctly, my state taxes were roughly the same in the two years; my 2009 federal taxes were about two-thirds of the 1999 level. That tax cut was a heckuva deal.

Or was it?
The extra money from the tax cut may have made it seem, to me, that I was wealthier…but that is not the case. Because of that tax cut, my life style didn’t change. All that changed was the national debt, part of which is my responsibility.
As we all know, those tax cuts were not accompanied by spending cuts by government in the roaring years of 2001-2009. The Federal government was spending money like drunken sailors, mostly off the books for the war in Iraq, and to fund, on the national credit card, big special interest benefits – like tax cuts – that someday would have to be paid for. Norquist and company were, in effect, filling the bathtub to make it easier, now, in 2010, to drown the unsuspecting victim: the people.
If we are smart, we will let the sun set on those ill-advised tax cuts, and start paying our bills, rather than suffering the delusion that the national credit card will last long into our future.
Sorry, Georgie and Dr. Larry, the free lunch is NOT free.
We were deceived into thinking that it was possible to get something for nothing. It’s not.

#216 – Dick Bernard: "Wherever you go, you must find your own Calcutta"

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Sunday one of my favorite Catholic Priests, Fr. Joe Gillespie, was recalling a 1994 visit to Mother Teresa’s Sisters of Charity in Calcutta.
At the time, he was a university professor in the United States, and he came by unannounced during a heavy monsoon rain. He knocked on the door and a Nun answered. “Would it be possible to see Mother Teresa”, Father Joe said. “Yes, she’s been expecting you.”
So, off the street he came, and face to face with Mother Teresa for a 35 minute conversation, puzzling all the while at the “she’s been expecting you” comment.
Visit nearing an end, she said to him, you should come here and work. “I can’t”, he said, “I’m under contract at the University”.
She understood, but as he departed, she said, “wherever you go, you must find your own Calcutta”. No more needed to be said.
This particular Sunday we had a visitor, a Priest from the Parish of Ste Catherine d’Alexandre de Bouzy, about 60 miles and four hours west of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on the north side of the long peninsula. We had expected this visitor, Fr. Claude-Renel Elys’ee.
After Mass Fr. Elys’ee met with those of us who were interested, talking about the usual things one would expect when talking about Haiti: their infrastructure was damaged, not destroyed, needed to be replaced. What they need is actual money – they can get the materials and they have the people who can do the work. They need medicines and school supplies. It was good to have him there, as it was a chance to reconnect directly with Haiti which has, six months after the quake, essentially gone invisible to most of us.

Fr. Ely'see at Basilica of St. Mary Minneapolis July 25, 2010


“Wherever you go, you must find your own Calcutta” came to mind often during his talk (in French, with interpreter).
We each can do much. We just need to exercise our imagination, and have the will and determination to follow through.
The question kept nagging at Fr. Joe after he left Mother Teresa. “How did she know I was coming, when I had done nothing beforehand to announce my visit?”
Back home in St. Louis he asked an older colleague about this.
“Oh”, he said, “she tells everybody that.”
But what a neat, neat, neat idea of a welcome.
And what a doable concept: “Wherever you go, you must find your own Calcutta”.

#215 – Dick Bernard: Believing oUrSelves to death.

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I have chosen the blessing (or curse) of receiving and sending lots of e-mails. I have not warmed to the banter that seems to prevail in Facebook, and I will probably never be a part of the 144-character Twitter culture. I like handwritten letters, which are essentially extinct. Open and rational conversation amongst people with differing points of view, who actually respect and listen to other points of view, has essentially vanished, at least in my observation.
With all the means of communication at our disposal, that very abundant means of communication has made for a dangerous time for US in the U.S. We have more ways to communicate less.
Today, we have the right (and the opportunity) to pick and choose from a menu of beliefs, and to then isolate ourselves within that particular belief. We do not bother with other points of view. We strategize to make our point of view dominant. Of course, the opposing side is similarly engaged. Never do the ‘sides’ meet, facing the opportunity (risk) of having to defend their point of view, or listen to that of the opposition.
In the process of isolating ourselves into small clusters of beliefs, we are killing ourselves as a nation.
No question, simple Belief is comforting: one does not have to be bothered with differing points of view. I believe. So should you.
Ten years or so ago I had glancing but very direct contact with Belief:
My then-brother-in-law owned a small house with small payments in a small city. His mother lived with him, paying him small rent, till she died. Along the way he became convinced that riches lay at the end of the Minnesota lottery and an array of other get-rich-quick schemes. He believed that he would win the lottery or some sweepstakes, and he continued to believe right up until his house was foreclosed, and the lock changed on his front door. He was hospitalized at the time, and it fell to me, the only survivor in the family, to deal with the mess.
He died in 2007, essentially destitute, still believing….
So, my relative was an idiot, you say?
He damaged himself, no doubt; but only himself. He never married, no children, nobody but himself suffered from his fantasy.
But there are endless “believers” in this or that, who insulate themselves from reality by simply refusing to acknowledge its potential existence.
Even more of a problem are the institutional leadership fantasies that have been killing us for many years. I’ll cite the most recent and, to me, a most interesting one:
A week ago, I was at Catholic Mass in the Cathedral in Bismarck ND and saw a little bullet in the church bulletin. “Religious Liberty Restoration Amendment. Have you had an opportunity to sign a petition to restore legal protection for religious freedom? If not, we have petitions at the parish office. The office is open Monday-Friday, 8:30 AM – 4:30 PM.”
It was a bit odd that said petition was not available in the vestibule. At home I looked it up on the internet, as you can. It is a ND initiative. Being Catholic, it didn’t take a practiced reading to know what they are about. Two ND Bishops were the lead signers. The intent very very clearly is to guarantee religious liberty to people who do not wish to abide by certain laws or beliefs with which they do not agree. It is easy to fill in the blanks on this, but I won’t. The petition is a cynical attempt to implement a particular religious belief, by public referendum.
The next night, at a motel in rural ND, I saw a potential unintended consequence if this initiative were to succeed: some tv show was talking about a Church whose “Blessed Sacrament” is Cannabis. I guess if the amendment passes, that church can come up to ND.
The next Sunday, I was a church in a rural ND town, and the church bulletin was talking about the proposed amendment: “…petitions signatures are being gathered from Catholics across the state of North Dakota…at [the local church over]…several weeks…only five individuals have signed the petition….” Apparently the ground swell is not that great, but once again, this attempt to covertly market a minorities beliefs as mandate is an example of a mind-set that is quietly killing our nation.

#214 – Dick Bernard: Exploring a Cultural Heritage

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There was a particularly remarkable moment at the closing program of the Initiatives in French Annual Conference in Bismarck ND July 10.
We had been treated to an evening of wonderful music and dance with a French flavor. The performers were Metis, Native American, African, and Caucasian. They performed ancient and modern music from West Africa to the North Dakota Indian Reservations to the traditional music and dance of the French-Canadian settlers to the Midwest. In common, they celebrated elements of the French culture, which they either represented, or were part of by native language or ancestry. It was a very rich evening.
The final number brought all the groups back to the stage and they improvised together. It was absolutely delightful. Here’s a photo (others from the program are at the end of this piece):

Metis fiddler Eddie King Johnson leads the improv at Belle Mehus Auditorium, Bismarck ND, July 10, 2010.


The U.S. is without any question a multi-cultural nation, in a multi-cultural world. Every world culture is represented within our borders. Increasingly, this is true of other nations as well. This reality can complicate relationships and, worse, can be used to fuel division and dissension through fear. The IFMidwest aim is to celebrate this diversity, and build bridges across boundaries of geography, language, race, culture, tradition….
This bridge building is not easy. On that single stage on Saturday night were performers from Togo, Cameroun, Congo (Zaire), and Cote d’Ivoire – all African countries whose official language is French. (One of the performers – I believe from Cameroun – said that in her country alone there were 218 different tribal cultures, each with their own dialect.) Within my French-Canadian extended family, I have cousins whose first language in Canada is French, including some who have considerable difficulty communicating in English. Then there’s me, who was never exposed to French, even in a school elective course, and is thus language handicapped when someone chooses to speak French, as happened on occasion on Saturday night.
The organizers of the Bismarck conference sought to implement the idea of Heritage as defined by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
As identified in the conference program “1. …Heritage consists of the worlds natural environment, its history and social institutions and its human spirit to imagine.
2. Examples…in the natural environment are the prairies, bodies of water, wetlands, mountains, oceans, buttes and bluffs, etc. In our social institutions and history, they are schools, families, businesses, farms, ranches, parishes, libraries, and museums, etc. The third heritage, that of the human spirit is found in paintings, stories, drama, the interpretation of history, politics, in moving speeches, music, sculpture, architecture, and daily customs we cultivate from cuisine to gardening.
3. Living heritage…consists of reflection on our past and the pursuit of relationships with the elements that constitute Heritage. Study in genealogy or other aspects of Heritage develop our curiosity, causing us to raise such questions as where our ancestors lived, how they fit into the society of their time, and what motivated them. Living heritage leads to new relationships among the three areas UNESCO defines as heritage.”
During the year preceding the conference, indeed for the previous 30 years, I had been delving into the “living heritage” component of my own family, culminating in a 500 page family history I brought to the gathering. So, the issue was very fresh on my mind.
At the end of the conference, I delivered to the Director of IF Midwest three large boxes full of material I had used for my book. They now reside in the IF Midwest archives at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks.
As I picked up one of the boxes, in which my father’s papers had been stored for many years, I noticed on the end of the box something I had never seen before: whichever company had made the box included instructions about its contents. The instructions were in English, in French, and in Spanish. American business has, for some time, really, come to grips with a reality that we all need to face as Americans. We are not, and will never be, a place where one language and one language only will dominate. Best for us to learn how to make the best of the abundant riches that come with our diversity.

African Arts Arena of Fargo and Grand Forks joined by a member of the audience.


Members of the audience join the on-stage performance


Dance Revels of the Twin Cities performs traditional French-Canadian and Metis dances.


Additional photos here.

#211 – Dick Bernard: Creating History, "Fact" vs "Story"

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“History: 1) an account of what has happened; narrative; story; tale.”
Websters New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, 1979 edition
July 8, about 6 p.m., I arrived at Bismarck ND, where I was to attend a French in America conference. My father was 100% French-Canadian, and I’d just completed a 500 page book on his family’s history, so the conference was a great reason for a trip (and an excellent experience, by the way.)
I was tired, but before I checked into my hotel I wanted to find the site where General Henry Hastings Sibley and troops had reached the Missouri River in the summer of 1863. A long-ago relative, Private Samuel Collette, had been one of the 2800 troops under Sibley’s command. I found the site (General Sibley Campground 3 or 4 miles south of downtown Bismarck at the south end of Washington Street). The next day I was at the ND Capitol grounds, and saw a large pie-shaped monument on the grounds. It turned out to be a map of the last part of the Sibley campaign. The Sibley venture had been, apparently, a very important event in the history of North Dakota, which was to become a state 26 years later. His unit had been in what is now Bismarck July 29-August 1, 1863.

Map of the last portion of the Gen. Henry Hastings Sibley Campaign in 1863


There were some likely facts leading to my interest: I had Samuel Collette’s military records from 1862-63; I now had seen the end-point of the campaign he’d been part of, and knew the many stops in between Minnesota and the Missouri River.
Beyond this, everything was story: the varied interpretations of why Sibley went west, and their meaning etc. etc. Such it is with history: as the above definition suggests, history is simply a collection of stories, perhaps illuminating, perhaps confusing or deliberately distorting.
The family history I had written, which was many years in the making, is many things. But a primary celebration of the history was the recording of stories, particularly of my common folk ancestors: a collective story which included their own recollections, or second or third hand recollections, or documents or written records. I was lucky in that I had a cadre of past and present family members who seemed to have an interest in recording people and events, including through photographs. But my reality is similar to most common families: people lacked literacy, or the time, or the interest, to record things that later generations might find interesting or significant. And every family has pieces of their tale that they’d rather not tell – the hidden and untold story is part of every narrative, without exception. So, for me, the task became assembling a puzzle from assorted scraps of evidence. A very significant portion of those 500 pages were stories recorded by various people over many years. I didn’t call these “facts”; rather they were “stories”. I acknowledged the missing pieces in the book….
On the final afternoon of the conference, I “skipped school” for a couple of hours, just to drive around Bismarck, a city I had last visited 25 years earlier.
Driving down the Main Street of the town, towards the Missouri River bridge, I saw a most unusual sign:

My curiosity was peaked, and I set out to find this Memorial. There was a monument (below) and on two plaques at this Memorial were two very carefully written narratives defining the composers view of the “Global War on Terrorism”. The words on the plaques are reprinted below, and speak for themselves. The Memorial was dedicated September 11, 2009.

Global War on Terrorism Memorial


Were these indelible words representations of “facts”, or were they, simply, some unnamed person’s “story” – a carefully written attempt to fashion a heroic one-sided narrative of a troubling and divisive time in United States history? This “War on a Word” (Terrorism) almost ruined us economically, and severely tarnished our reputation as an ethical society through things like sanctioned use of torture. We lost standing as a part of the world community; and reputation lost is difficult to regain.
Did the permanent recording of heroic victorious words in bronze, in a public space, with a sign showing the way to them, elevate them from “story” into “fact”, more significant than other stories? Or were they, rather, simply an attempt to diminish or eliminate other stories, perhaps even more factual, from the community consciousness?
Earlier, in driving around Bismarck, on individual lawns I saw Peace signs on a couple of lawns. I wonder what their opinion of that Terrorism Memorial might be.

Peace sign in Bismarck ND July 9, 2010


Let the conversation continue.
*****
The Story as told by the plaques at the Global War on Terrorism Memorial:
#1
THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERRORISM
Operation Enduring Freedom
Operation Enduring Freedom began October 7, 2001, in Afghanistan following al-Qaeda’s attack on the United State on September 11, 2001, and has also included operations in the Philippines, Horn of Africa, Trans Sahara, and Kyrgyzstan. In October, 2006, NATO forces, led by the United States and United Kingdom, assumed command of Coalition forces. Afghani Presidential elections were held in October, 2004, and parliamentary elections followed in October, 2005. The enemy continues to resist the elected government of Afghanistan and Coalition efforts to secure freedom and democracy for Afghan citizens.
Operation Iraqi Freedom
Operation Iraqi Freedom began on March 20, 2003, with the liberation of Iraq. Coalition forces from 40 nations participated in military action in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. By mid-April, 2003, Coalition forces began restoring civil services, despite violence aimed at the new Iraqi government and Coalition forces. In 2006 the first democratic elections were held. On June 29, 2009, United States forces withdrew from Baghdad and other cities across Iraq.
“We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom” Dwight Eisenhower
#2
Memorial to the Fallen
in the Global War on Terrorism
This Memorial is dedicated to the members of the United States military and Department of Defense civilians who lost their lives in the Global War on Terrorism. It is a place where families, friends and fellow citizens can reflect on the lives of the Fallen and remember their service to our country. It was funded through the generosity of businesses, organizations and individuals throughout North Dakota and across the United States. The memorial is a joint venture between the City of Bismarck and the North Dakota National Guard.
The Battlefield Cross
The Battlefield Cross has been used as a visible reminder of a deceased comrade since the Civil War. The helmet and identification tags signify the Fallen. The inverted weapon with bayonet signals a time for prayer, a break in the action to pay tribute to the Fallen. The combat boots represent the final march of the last battle.
“We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we we will always be free.” President Ronald Reagan

#210 – Dick Bernard: A Farm Freezer, Haiti, the Oil Spill and US

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Monday, July 12, was the six month anniversary of the catastrophic earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince and area in Haiti.
That same day, I spent a few hours helping my Uncle and Aunt, out at their now-empty North Dakota farm. (They’ve lived in a nearby town for several years – an option they don’t like, but the only reasonable option they have. They are at an age, and their medical conditions are such, that they could no longer survive independently on this place where they lived as brother and sister for over 80 years. My uncle is 85, his sister, my aunt, turns 90 a week from today. Their house remains much as they left it, but they don’t live there, only frequent visits.)
One of Monday’s tasks was to empty their freezer which included frozen produce from their garden, some of it ten years old. They knew it had to be done: my uncle, in fact, brought up the idea. That produce in that freezer would never be used by anyone, including themselves. But the notion of wasting this food was reprehensible to him. He was nine years old during the worst year of the Great Depression in ND, 1934, and he knows what it is like to have nothing.
We unloaded the freezer, and put its contents on the back of his old pickup truck, and drove down to the family garden – a one acre plot, used by the family for many years. The garden is still used by the couple, but only a tiny portion of it is planted. They don’t have the energy to garden more, and even if they did, the produce would go to waste: for them, it is unusable.
During the Depression and other bygone years, there were eight people or more who depended on that garden, but the prospects of even a small crop to harvest and process for the winter were not always good. Once experienced, one tends not to forget such experiences.
Those bygone years, the normal process was to pressure cook and can the food, in sealed glass jars. There was no electricity and thus no freezer; there were no plastic bags – a product of the petroleum industry. Kids now-a-days would be hard-pressed to even imagine the planting/growing/harvesting/preserving process which people of my generation grew up with. Forced to live that way again, most of us would not survive, literally.
Down at the garden we emptied the plastic bags which had held the frozen produce of the farm: spinach, corn, beans, peas, broccoli, onions, apples, and on and on and on. Considering it was ten years worth, it really wasn’t a lot of, as my uncle would say, “wasted food”.
While he was sitting on the tail gate of the truck, opening and emptying the bags, he was lamenting the waste, here, while so many people were starving elsewhere. No, he didn’t think that frozen bag of kernel corn should be sent to Haiti; more so, the notion of waste was on his mind. He wants to help, but how? People his age get endless appeals for funds from all manner of agencies. My advice to him: throw them away unless you know the group is good. So many are simply scams.
I doubt that he – or I, for that matter – thought about the amount of electricity that had to be consumed to keep that food frozen….
Haiti, and that waste at the farm unexpectedly came together for me a little later in the day. Back at my temporary home in the local motel, I flipped on the television, and happened across a CSPAN program recorded earlier that day: a panel discussing Haiti six months after the earthquake. The program is well worth watching. It had not occurred to me till that moment that July 12 was indeed the six months anniversary of that humanitarian disaster.
Back home in the Twin Cities the next day, there were several e-mails with varying perspectives six months after the quake in Haiti. Mostly, though, Haiti is out of sight, out of mind, even for people like myself who have a great interest in Haiti.
More on our minds, currently, is the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico: hundreds of millions of gallons of crude oil befouling the Gulf: oil which was to be used for the fuel that got me out to that North Dakota farm, and back; and which was used for to manufacture those plastic bags we had just emptied.
Mostly, for most of us, life goes on. “Don’t worry, be happy”. We’ll always have it all.
Don’t count on it.

From the garden, back to the garden


The farm garden, before an acre, presently only a small plot.

#209 – Richard Bigelow: Thoughts on Attitudes towards Immigration and Immigrants

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Mr. Bigelow lives in border country Texas and grew up in rural Colorado. He responds, here, to one of those ubiquitous basically anti-immigrant – if you’re not “white like me” rants that whiz around the internet – anonymous hate speech.
“Yes, I have some different thoughts on immigration than those in the letter you sent. My thinking is in process and I don’t purport to have very many answers to the many difficult issues involved but I am happy to share some of my thoughts.
As you know, I am a middle class, white, mostly Anglo-Saxon, protestant, male, born in the United States of America. That makes me part of the most powerful group of people to ever walk the planet. I love my country and believe we have done and continue to do more good in the world than any other nation. Our laws and system of justice while not perfect are the best the world has to offer. I am a proud citizen of the USA. That said, I believe that there are some major problems at home and in the world that we as a great and powerful nation have a human, moral and Christian obligation to address. Poverty and racism are two of those problems that are core in the immigration debate.
One doesn’t have to go back too far in history to realize we are all immigrants maybe including even the “Native American” population. Being part of the English immigrant group that became the dominant group way before I was born it is easy to understand some of the ethnocentric feeling articulated in [the internet] letter. However, as a teen I became aware of the melting pot myth. As you know there were not many minority families in [my Colorado home town]. My first Black and Hispanic friends were from [a nearby larger city] and not only did they not want to melt but would not have been allowed had they wanted. They were considered by much of the dominant culture as inferior and were treated differently. In my first minorities class in college we talked about the tossed salad analogy as opposed to the melting pot. This allows for a wonderful multi cultural society where we live together with many common issues but maintain and even celebrate the differences. This idea continues to guide me in my life journey. I can and sometimes do celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, Cinco De Mayo, Kwanzaa, Passover, even tried to fast during Ramadan one year (that sucked). I love to dance the Chicken Dance in Fredericksburg, visit China Town in S.F, little Italy in New York and Boston. Anyway you get the idea.
In spite of my pride in the USA I believe we have a lot to answer for. We have allowed those immigrants who look and sound kind of like us to assimilate while exploiting the Black, Brown, and Yellow “immigrates”. I don’t think I need to rehash civil rights stuff here or the history of how we provoked a war with Mexico so we could lay claim to land from Colorado to California. Nor should I have to review the immoral treatment of Japanese and German Americans during WWII. I also hope that most people are aware of how many of us have in the past and continue to encourage and even help bring workers here illegally so we can build our own wealth and that of our great nation by paying meager wages and limited benefits.
I have chosen to live in an area close to the border where I am a minority. When I go to a store and no one speaks English and those ethnocentric thoughts begin to kick in, I only have to remember that many of these families have been right here since before the Pilgrims made it to New England. You would be hard pressed to find a more patriotic group of people ready to serve this great nation than among the Mexican/American community here.
I think you know that [my wife] is from here but I am not sure you know she is a descendant of the Solis family, part of a big Spanish land grant from the 1500’s that was on both sides of the river. Her grandparents only spoke Spanish and she only spoke Spanish when she started 1st grade. Her well meaning Anglo teachers punished her when she spoke Spanish even at recess and when asking to go to the bathroom. She learned her lessons well, lived in Houston for 10 years and is much more urbane than me. With my last name and her light complexion people think she is Anglo. My red neck friends in Abilene would try telling her Mexican jokes. I cut them off if I saw it coming but didn’t always see it coming. She only smiled but in her heart she is really not sure that she is not some how inferior and she still feels guilty speaking Spanish even though she uses it everyday in her work with veterans. It breaks my heart.
While it is hard to generalize about such a large group of people, I believe that most of the documented and undocumented immigrants are here because they already have family here and or they are unable to support themselves adequately in their home country. I think that the reason we don’t have a big problem on the Canadian border is that their economy is good, they look and sound more like the dominant culture and I am told it is not too hard to get a work visa especially if one has a needed skill. I understand it is very difficult and time consuming to get a work visa in the US if one is from Mexico or Central America and especially if one doesn’t have a professional credential. Again my ethnocentric self thinks “good, we have enough problems with out importing a bunch more poor unskilled laborers that will further stress ‘our’ economy“. However, there is data that suggests that if the undocumented were able to earn a fair wage and pay taxes it might actually help the economy. Also my Human and Christian ethics kick in and I am reminded that God put the river there but we made it a border. If I couldn’t feed my family on the other side I would try to cross anyway I could. I do not want to tear down the Statue of Liberty or besmirch the Ellis Island folks [a suggestion in the letter to which he responds]. But there are other stories equally compelling.
There are no easy answers to the immigration questions. We have made great progress in the civil rights arena in my lifetime but racism is still alive and well. Ethnocentric pride in ones country can be a close cousin to racism. One need only to read all the anger and hate on the internet as people post regarding anything Obama does or on the new Arizona law. People who think there are easy answers like tougher laws, fences, or militarizing the border are at best naive at worst racist. I would like to see policies developed with love of neighbor as the guiding light, and more money spent on improving the economy in other countries even if we have to sacrifice more. To whom a lot is given a lot is expected. There is something wrong in a nation who spends more on a cup of designer coffee than some workers make in a day, or where we spend more on pet care than the GNP of some nations. I am not sure open borders is the right thing but I am not sure that it is not. I do think we need some kind of amnesty although I am not yet sure what it should look like. I believe in the ideal of one world with equality for all but I’m not naive enough to think we will get there any time soon. However, I never thought I would see a woman or black president. I am now hopeful I will see a woman.
　
On the subject of the Arizona Law I would think every American, liberal or conservative should be worried. I don’t want to live in a society where I or anyone else has to carry papers. Even under current law when we leave our home heading north we have to go through check points about 60 miles from the border. They are multi million dollar facilities with all kinds of electronic equipment and usually dozens of border patrol agents on duty. I must turn off my cell phone, wait in line, usually less than 5 minutes, they sometimes check my undercarriage with a mirror, and frequently have dogs who sniff the outside of my car. They usually only ask “are you a US citizen” and wave me through. [My wife] gets even less hassle because she is so pale and I’m so swarthy. Sometimes they ask “where are you going today”. Now I can either tell them, lie to them or say what I would like to say which is, “none of your xxx business” but then I would be there awhile so I lie to them. The woman agents seem to like to hear “I am headed to Dallas to visit my grand-kids”. Minor hassle for me but I assure you that some of my dark skinned heavy accented brothers and sisters have much more hassle including the dog inside and some times even pat downs. I don’t like it and I damn sure don’t want to empower or require the local or state police to do the same stuff. To those who say “they are only enforcing the law” I would remind them the this great nation was founded by a bunch of law breakers (as in tea party).
Unjust laws need to be challenged.
Everyone must find his or her own ethic and act accordingly. I am not always sure what to do but I pray about it a lot. For now I plan to continue offering food and shelter to those headed north with or with out papers when I can. I would help them get through the check points if I could but I don’t know how without getting arrested. I will pay them the same with or without papers to cut my grass etc. so they can eat. I will support my sister-in-law, with my tax dollars, who takes care of badly damaged babies who were lucky enough to take advantage of the law that lets them become a citizen because the mother crossed for delivery. I will not report the husband of friend who is spending 3 years in prison at tax payers expense who was formerly making a living for his family by day labor and who will be deported when he is released and then be back with his family within a week. I will support and applaud my friend who teaches ESL [English as a Second Language] to the undocumented children of fishermen from Central America and takes them to UIL competitions where they usually excel. I will continue to travel to Rio Bravo (30 miles into Mexico) as part of my church mission to help at a deaf school even though travel is kind of risky right now with the cartel wars.
I know you like to read / I recommend the following:
Manana (don’t know how to make the ~ over the n) by Justo Gonzales the Methodist Clergy, Cuban born, who I think is still on faculty at the International Seminary in Atlanta.
The Great River by Paul Hogan (a History of the Rio Grande but reads like a novel)
Rain of Gold by Victor Villa Senor (again with the ~ on the n another story of immigration not via Ellis Island)
Thanks for letting me share some of my thoughts. Reasonable people should reason together.”
My love to all / Dick

#208 – Dick Bernard: The Deer

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We had just settled in along the July 4 Parade Route in Afton MN, but I decided to walk back to the car to get rainwear, just in case.
It was a short walk up the street, going up hill, and I was on the left side of the street when I noticed something very, very odd: a deer head – only the head- was looking around from behind the rear wheel of a parked car. It was totally out of any normal context for me.
As I got closer, I saw that it was indeed a deer, and a live one, trapped between pavement and the underside of the trunk of the car. It was terrified. It was doing what a deer would logically do to get up, but this only made its predicament worse – you can’t stand up underneath a car. It made a ghastly sort of sound, as a desperate and frightened deer would do.
There were plenty of people around – this was the main route to the Parade, and the Parade was set to begin only a half block away – so I was not needed. Someone said the deer had slipped on the pavement, and fell, sliding under the car. The police had been contacted. I went to the car, got the rain gear, and on the way back took a couple of photos of the deer.

Afton MN July 4, 2010


I knew the deer was being cared for, but what I had just seen stuck with me during the entire parade.
Parade over, we walked back to the car, passing the still parked car.
No deer head; no deer. But lots of evidence that a deer had been there, particularly lots of scraped off fur on the pavement.
The first couple of bystanders I asked didn’t know what had happened to the deer, but thought it wouldn’t have been able to survive the trauma, and probably had to be put down.
At the parking lot, someone who had seen it all said that three law enforcement people had worked together and freed the deer, which had escaped back into the woods from which it had come.
Apparently there was a happy ending.
The parade? OK. But no match for what I had seen.

#207: Johan van Parys: Thoughts on Forgiveness

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Dr. Johan van Parys is Director of Liturgy at Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis, and the lead article in the Sunday June 27 church bulletin was this powerful commentary.
Thoughts on Forgiveness
Paris is one of those magical cities. No matter what time of year one visits, the city has a way of capturing a person’s imagination. I don’t quite remember how many times I have been to Paris. Growing up in neighboring Belgium it made for an easy trip. Surprisingly, there was one monument never visited until my last trip there: the Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation, the memorial to those deported from France during World War II.
My grandfather and the other men working in my grandmother’s shoe factory were deported to Nazi camps because she refused to make shoes for the Nazi army. The family home was occupied and my grandmother and great-grandmother were made to work for Nazi officers. When my grandmother died, I inherited her papers including the moving letters my grandfather sent from the camp as well as letters from one of the officers who had occupied my grandmother’s house. The latter include descriptions of the devastation of his village; about the death of his two sons; and about the horrors of the war. Most striking was his plea for forgiveness.
Until I read these letters I had been unable to visit any death camps or memorials for those who died in the Second World War. After getting a glimpse of the power of forgiveness that was revealed to me through these letters, I was moved to learning and visiting. Thus I went to the Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation. It was an amazing experience.
At the edge of one of the islands in the river Seine a narrow and steep stairway leads down to the memorial courtyard. A low-level fenced-in window is the only place that allows a glimpse of the outside. A severe sculpture representing imprisonment and torture hangs in front of this window. On the opposite side, a narrow door guarded by two oppressive columns barely allows entrance into the memorial itself.
The main installation, on the far end of the foyer, is a long narrow corridor lined with 200,000 quartz crystals, one for each man, woman, child deported from France by during the Second World War. A rod-iron gate prevents entrance. An eternal flame burns at the very end of the corridor.
This extraordinary building captures those who enter it from the very first moment, guiding them down the narrow steps, through the courtyard, into the foyer, to the wall of remembrance and the eternal flame. This journey takes each person through the reality of the suffering of these particular people and all human suffering, to the light of hope for humanity which too often seems untenable and almost absurd.
My walk back to the hotel took me past Notre Dame Cathedral. I could not but enter and light a candle for all those who are suffering at the hand of other people. I stayed for Vespers and prayed “Thy Kingdom Come” with more fervor than ever before.