#234 – Dick Bernard: August 29, 2010

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Posts directly related here and here.
The Glenn Beck extravaganza at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 2010, has come and gone.
Today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune estimated the crowd at “Tens of thousands“; then, in the same article, mentioned “hundreds of thousands“; and even “a million strong” (my Congresswoman Michele Bachmann). There are no official estimates, only what somebody or other said there might be. The reader can believe what he or she wishes. The high estimates come, of course, from the people who have a vested interest in making it sound like there were oceans of people gathered there in support of their agenda. Whatever the case, there were a lot of people, overwhelmingly white, including an unknown number and probably large number who would be like me, had I been in Washington DC on Saturday. I would have wandered over to see what was going on…. Regardless, there is a lot of difference between “tens of thousands” and “a million”…such is how estimates are used, to sell a dream…. In this case, reality takes a back seat to fantasy.
(I need context for such large numbers as supposedly appeared in Washington DC on Saturday. 20,000 (“tens of thousands”) compares with 1,000,000 as 2 compares to 50. It is as if some people showed up at the small park outside my house, and one person said there were two people there, and another said 100, and somebody “fair and balanced” said that must mean there had been 50 there. You can easily count 100 people; when you claim 1,000,000 it’s a wild, wild, guess. The only reason for the 1,000,000 estimate is to shape the historical rendition of the day. Here’s an independent estimate with rationale: 87,000 attendance.)
There will be endless analyses of this event.
The rally was supposedly to “restore honor” to the United States, presumably because people like me and the persons we support are bringing dishonor to the country.
By nature and by habit developed over many years of daily work with differences in points of view, I appreciate and respect honest differences of informed opinion.
This is not what I am seeing today. What is going on now, in this country, is very troubling in three specific respects:
1. We are being fed lies, and to a very disturbing degree gullible people are believing these lies and acting on their belief. Johnathan Alter of Newsweek has a good commentary on this very sad reality. We are being manipulated by deliberate lies.
2. The campaign of misinformation and disinformation is largely funded by wealthy interests who have no interest whatsoever in the interests or aspiration of the rabble they are inciting to act to throw out the hated liberals – people like me – accusing us of all manner of evil behavior. Frank Rich of the New York Times ties this together nicely, with links to the research.
This is not an issue of whether or not the wealthy should have the freedom of speech; but what is happening here is profound abuse of this right, and complete contempt for the accompanying responsibility to tell the truth. “If it works, do it” is the mantra.
3. Most dangerous of all, in my opinion, is the tendency people have to focus on their one or two single “hot button issues” and to do all their decision making based on their beliefs (or biases) around these issues. Not only does this make them susceptible to lies and distortions funded by people who don’t even care about their issues, except to the extent that they can be manipulated through these issues; but this country becomes “governed” through a coalition of huge numbers of tiny “islands” of people united around issues. This is dangerous to our society.
I live, and have lived for years, in a “coalition” of 24 quadhomes (96 homeowners) which has its own sets of rules for the respect and maintenance of our collective property. We are like a small town in the midst of a larger city. It is not hard to imagine the scenario if each of these 96 homeowners had the unfettered right to make their own rules for themselves, with no responsibility to their neighbors. Similarly, a small minority can cause chaotic results – temporarily – if they are savvy politically. Breakdown can and will cause chaos if allowed to take root in our country. We are the most complex and (probably) still the most powerful country in the world, and we cannot personally decide our countries fate on our own pet issues, or through misinformation. We risk losing everything we value.
Beck’s throngs on Saturday represent plenty of people who are no doubt committed to their version of overthrow of a duly elected government and, most importantly, imposition of their own values on everyone else. While they represent only a small minority of this country’s population, they will all likely vote in November. The only reasonable way to counter them is to vote ourselves, and promote a more positive and constructive agenda of positive change.
I speak as an honorable person, and as a liberal.

#233 – Dick Bernard: August 28, 1963 and today.

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August 28, 1963, I was a soldier in a U.S. Army Infantry Company. We were playing war in South Carolina, and had been slogging through the outback of that state for a week or more. Certainly, we had no access to television, and I don’t recall any contact with the outside world via radio either. We may as well have been in southeast Asia, which is what our training was about.
The August 28th March on Washington and Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech passed by without any notice on our parts. In fact, we didn’t know it was taking place.
We had, however, had our brush with segregation, deep south style. Our unit was integrated – the Army was integrated – but in the rural south you went by the rural south’s rules.
At one point, a bunch of guys came across a high school that had a shower. Whites were welcome, only. Another time there was a restaurant incident where the whites would be served but not the colored.
In Saluda, S.C. I recall a laundromat with the white entrance (the good machines) on street level; the colored entrance (the cast-off machines) in the lower level, down the hill. Country stores had segregated counters for serving white and colored. The rules were the rules.
One time a member of our company came up with a copy of the Atlanta Constitution, then and still Georgia’s premiere newspaper. In that paper was a most remarkable advertisement/column “Pickrick Says:“, advertising Pickrick Skillet Fried Chicken for 25 cents, but devoting most of its full column length to a segregationist diatribe by owner Lester Maddox, who some years later became Governor of Georgia.
I didn’t keep that paper, but “Pickrick” and Maddox stuck in my mind. Some years later, in Atlanta for a conference, I wanted to see this Pickrick place, and did, in then-new Underground Atlanta.
Some years after that I went to the microfilm library at the University of Minnesota and printed out Maddox’ weekly rants for the month of August, 1963. There were five of them. I still have the copies.
On August 31, 1963, Maddox commented on “The Washington March” of August 28. Verbatim, here is what he said: “The Washington March proved that the Communists have gained a stronghold in labor, religion and government. It also proved that the movement is not one that is Christian, American, nor is it a movement for equality, but has turned into a fight against the white race. White renegades in public office, education, religion, labor, the news media and in business are guilty and the blood to be shed will be on their hands.“*
Maddox went on with other comments of a similar nature about other things, but when I hear later about today’s charade on the National Mall in Washington, I will be using my experience in 1963 as relevant context.
Eerily, what Maddox said 45 years ago resonates with today’s fear-ridden haters who will make up the nucleus of tomorrows gathering. These are people who would like to roll back the clock to the good old days when Negroes knew their proper place, and that place wasn’t equal.
We’ve come a long way since 1863 and the Emancipation Proclamation, and 1963, when there was a Dream that somehow 1863 would come to reality. We will not be turned back in 2010. But there is a powerful and vocal faction that considers progress in things like peace and justice to be somehow evil, and their presence will be seen today. They need to be exposed to the bright light of day.
* – The best response to Maddox is from Martin Luther King himself, in his 1964 book, “Why We Can’t Wait”, which chronicles 1963. This book is still in print. About the only point King misses in the book is the Communist accusation. At the time, he likely did not know that J.Edgar Hoover’s FBI was trying to find links between him, the movement he was leading, and Communism. To my knowledge, Hoover/FBI found no such links, ever.
In a sense, Maddox’ comment about “white renegades” probably basically fits King’s comments on what he observed in the same year. The power structure, including churches and labor unions, did its best to blunt the civil rights movement. Prosperous Negroes, who had made good money in the existing system, were not interested in the risks inherent in social change. Individual Priests, Nuns, workers, and other “renegades” did make the difference. They were the ones who appeared in public, especially in the early days. They disobeyed their bosses, people like Maddox, and took risks.

#232 – Dick Bernard: Politics on a Stick

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Yesterday was the opening of the Minnesota State Fair, and like much of Minnesota, my State Fair gene kicks in, and I’ll make my way there, zombie-like, making my usual rounds, having my usual “health foods”, and come home again. It’s an annual ritual. I can’t help myself….
Every two years, coincident with the State Fair, comes the intensity of partisan politics and the endless parade of political advertisements on radio, television, and fliers in mailboxes. With large populations to reach, candidates must advertise. It is an essential.
But as “Nutrition” is to Whatever-is-on-a-Stick at the Fair, so “Truth” is to Political Advertising. Nutrition and Stick Food are oxymorons; so, often, are Truth and Political Advertising.
In politics, the intention is to make oneself look as good as possible; the other side as bad as possible, while seeming to tell the truth. This is at its most perverse from the assorted political action committees that have high-sounding names, but represent very narrow constituencies who prefer not to be known to the public.
Oddly, “we, the people”, not only enjoy dishonesty, we seem to crave it. What an odd way to pick our leaders.
Caveat Emptor.
Most people are willfully ignorant of politicians and the position they take, and politicians are wary of the dilemmas of honest politics, so I guess it is wishful thinking to imagine a more enlightened day when political argument can be intense, and those who participate can be trusted to take honest positions without need to trash their opposition or misrepresent their own…. But I can dream.
In the meantime, for those who do care, and do participate, I think it is important to make every effort to get to know the candidates, particularly the ones you are inclined to support, as well as possible, and to actually take the time to work for them in the ways that are available: money and time being the primary ones.
There are excellent candidates out there, well worth supporting. Often times their positive attributes are buried underneath a fog by their opponents, usually in negative political attack ads. Best to simply dismiss these and seek out some semblance of truth from other sources, which are available. And to judge the candidate not only one or two favorite issues of yours, but to consider the reality of the tensions they have (or will have) to daily experience in faithfully representing their diverse constituencies.
Personally I do think there is a major and substantive distinction between parties in this instance, but this blog is not a place to highlight that distinction.
I do offer, however, a historical picture of who controlled the government in Washington D.C. from 1977 to the present: Congress makeup 1977 on001. I felt compelled to do this chart in April of 2009, two and a half months into the Presidency of Barack Obama, because, even at that time, Obama was being labeled a failure by his enemies.
As I say: Caveat Emptor.

#231 – Dick Bernard: The Minnesota Orchestra; Preparing for the BBC Proms

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August 20 we spent a delightful evening at the Minnesota Orchestra Guarantors Concert at Orchestra Hall.
We’re long-time subscribers, so the superb music was no surprise. Beginning Friday night, August 27, 2010, the same Minnesota Orchestra performs in London at the famed BBC Proms – the only American orchestra on this years Proms list.
Over the years we’ve seen lots of conductors and guest conductors at the podium at Orchestra Hall. They are all leaders. But they are part of a team – an Orchestra – extraordinarily talented musicians who work together to bring to life music composed, most often, by long dead composers. Friday night we listened to Barber, Beethoven and Bruckner. (Minnesota Orchestra is a union orchestra, but this adds to its functionality. Conductors and Union members work within the rules to fashion brilliantly presented music.)
A few hours before Saturday’s concert, thanks to a couple of tips, I went to page 288 of the September, 2010, issue of Vanity Fair magazine to read a long article “Washington, We Have a Problem”, outlining the extreme dysfunction of our current political system in the United States.
Sitting there in row four directly behind Conductor Osmo Vanska at Orchestra Hall, I couldn’t help but compare/contrast the performance of a superb Orchestra against our own U.S. of A. as played out by its leaders in Washington and most especially the huge lobbying corps behind the scenes.
One might say that we in the U.S. have selected a Conductor for our National Orchestra. He is called “President of the United States”.
We bring our Conductor to a podium, facing an unruly mob of orchestra members (we can call them “Congress” and “Senate”), many of whom have no interest in anything other than the conductors failure. Within this Orchestra are people who not only do not practice the music for the performance to come, but feel it is their right to play whatever tune they feel like playing during the concert, if they even bother to show up. There is hardly any discipline in this motley crew; they are ‘hired’ by voters often with little interest in other than their own limited parochial issues. Some see their sole role as sowing discord.
Meanwhile, out in the audience of this national “orchestra”, we’re chatting up a storm, texting, cell phones out and at the ready, arguing with the people in front, behind and to the side, some of us trying to listen, but most of us immersed in our own worlds and needs. We feel no need for restraint or cooperation. I want country western from that bunch up there; you want 70s light rock; somebody else actually came for the dreadfully boring music we’re hearing up there – old, dead music. And we have to pay [taxes] for this?
What I describe isn’t much of a recipe for “success”.
Yet we extol our system of government as being the best that ever was or will be: a shining model for the world.
Friday nights concert at Orchestra Hall was superb, as expected.
And likely, at the BBC Proms in London on Friday night, August 27, our Minnesota Orchestra will be a superb representative of the very best that is America. Follow the tour here.
We deserve better from our own government.

#230 – Dick Bernard: Lynn Elling, A World Citizen and Witness for Peace

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Every now and then, if one pays attention, someone wanders into their life and makes a difference just by being who he or she is.
For me, one such person is Lynn Elling, Minneapolis, closing in on 90 years young, and 67 years of marriage to Donna.

Lynn Elling at Big Sandy Lake August 21, 2010


Lots of us want to make a difference. Lynn’s experience as an LST officer in the War in the Pacific 1943-45 compelled him to seek a better way to solve problems than war, and a visit to the Hiroshima memorial in 1954 cemented his “driving dream.” I’ve previously told most of his story at a website I dedicated to one of his major accomplishments. It is here. I am privileged to be on the Board of the organization he founded, World Citizen, whose mission is Peace Education for teachers, as well as Peace Sites, Peace Poles and the Nobel Peace Prize Festival at Augsburg College, Minneapolis, for school children. The Nobel Peace Prize Festival is an annual event in the Twin Cities which honors the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. Next years date: March 4, 2011. The laureate is President Barack Obama.
Lynn was, it seems, born to lead. I was at Big Sandy Lake near McGregor MN last Saturday, at his invitation, for the annual gathering of the Big Sandy Lake homeowners association – a 500 homeowner group which has Lynn’s palm prints all over it. At the picnic he and Donna were recognized for their leadership, particularly in establishment of a Big Sandy Community Foundation to help preserve the lake environment as well as contribute to the greater surrounding community. A week or two earlier he had been honored for his work on Peace at the Concordia Language Villages camp near Bemidji (in the above photo, he’s holding a memento he received at that event.) I know he was President of his Church Congregation in Minneapolis, and on and on.
No question, he’s been a driven man, driven by his driving dream of Peace amongst all peoples and nations.
Outside the door of their cabin – a place he’s known as his lake home since he was two years old – is a symbol of his dedication to Peace.

The designation of the Elling's cabin as a Peace Site


Anyone, any place, can become a Peace Site. The information is here. Check it out. The importance of being a Peace Site is symbolic, yet substantive. It gives witness to a place of Peace.
Thanks, Lynn and Donna, for your witness to Peace over many years.

Lynn and Donna at the Big Sandy Lake homeowners annual picnic August 21, 2010

#229 – Dick Bernard: Re-visiting "The Last Truck Out" and "Swords into Plowshares"

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Usually OutsideTheWalls is a sleepy blog hamlet in the blog universe. The two posts about the pullout of American combat troops from Iraq (here and here) excited an unusual amount of comment on my regular list* – over half of the many comments agreeing with me; the other half not. (I have disabled the comment feature on this blog solely because of serious spam problems some months ago. To date, I haven’t had the nerve to re-try the comment feature. The indomitable salespeople for exotic drugs need to find another venue.)
Two comments in the last several days stuck with me which both relate directly to the topic of U.S. policy in Iraq and elsewhere.
The first was the final comment received about the blog posts: “I consider Obama not as “a moderate” but as balanced, rational. I detest political labels and am glad that as [part of my religious belief] I don’t get involved in party politics…it’s just too divisive and is tearing this country apart!!! We need to overhaul our political system….IMHO and just vote on issues and individuals not parties.”
More on this comment in a moment.
The second comment came at a great conversation among strangers on Thursday night, from a lady I’d never met before, who was born and raised in the country of Ghana, and who, for a dozen or so years, lived in Australia, and only a couple of years ago came to live in this political and economic mess (my editorial) that is the current United States of America. I think I can fairly say that “Alyson”, a very bright and aware woman, was puzzled by us (U.S.). We didn’t quite match our news releases from her earlier years.
Among the handouts on Thursday night was my rendition of present day Iraq and region, on which I’d superimposed an outline of Minnesota Iraq environs ca 2005001
Alyson marveled that Minnesota had only 5 million population, contrasted with 24 million in her native Ghana (a country slightly larger than Minnesota in land area); and 22 million in Australia, a place as large in land area as the United States. Then there was the U.S. with over 300,000,000 people, and the assorted political behaviors observed in her time here in this immensely complicated country of ours**.
The next day came that comment from a very valued friend who (I think) mostly agrees with me on political kinds of questions.
“I don’t get involved in party politics…it’s just too divisive and is tearing this country apart!!! We need to overhaul our political system….IMHO and just vote on issues and individuals not parties.”
Unfortunately, I know too many people who “just vote on issues and individuals”, and, unfortunately, they very often vote against each other. You win or you lose. You are either in power or you’re nothing. And we complain.
In our country with over 300,000,000 people, roughly 200,000,000 are eligible to vote, a crucial number (or so it seems) either identify their one or two pet issues and vote accordingly…or can’t be bothered at all with even voting, much less voting in a reasonably informed way.
If our country collapses, it will not be because of political corruption (a feature of all political systems), or party politics that stink.
We will collapse because it is our will that it be so, as we stay stuck in our own ideological mindset; our absolute “truth”.
We need to seek out the individuals as leaders who seem to be capable of acting like adults, rather than children, and are able and willing to multi-task, seeking to build agreement amongst the endless factions in the crazy-quilt country of ours.
* – Persons interested in joining my own P&J (Peace and Justice) list serve can e-mail me at dick(underscore)bernardATmsnDOTcom.
** – An excellent and long commentary on contemporary U.S. politics is “Washington, We Have a Problem” in the September, 2010, issue of Vanity Fair (the one with Lady Gaga on the cover). It is well worth the time to read.

#228 – Dick Bernard: Making the Change from "Swords into Plowshares"

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This post relates directly to #227 – The Last Truck Out.
My guess is that there are relatively few who truly believe that Perpetual War is the path to Perpetual Peace. Even those who recite the assorted ‘might is right’ mantras probably doubt the wisdom of this position. Tens of millions upon tens of millions of war dead, especially in the last hundred years, testify to the insanity of war as solution to problems. We know we need a different formula for living together on this planet or we’re all dead.
Still, ours is a nation built on the value of military might and conquest, and huge numbers of us, including myself, have very close familiarity with the military system. So, when in doubt, the path to peace is usually more war: it is a national mantra, difficult to change. Sometimes it seems impossible to change.
Wednesday night I was heartened when that last combat truck came through the gate from Iraq into Kuwait. I was heartened even though 50,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq, which is still an unstable country, politically.
I was heartened because possibly, just possibly, the scales have tipped from a military solution to every problem, to more of an emphasis on diplomacy: the possibility that a Department of State can play a larger role against an immense Department of Defense. I will continue to believe that what happened yesterday was an immense step forward, rather than a petty and unimportant one.
“We, the people” are key to encouraging this transition. How?
As I write, I have in front of me a dog-eared copy of Martin Luther King, Jr’s 1964 book “Why We Can’t Wait“. It was a used book when I received it – a plus not a minus! – a most welcome gift from my friend Lydia Howell in December, 2006. It is a book I urge everyone to read reflectively. My edition, from 1968, is the reprinted and identical edition still available at bookstores and on-line.
MLK wrote the book when he was 34 years old, and it was published shortly after his 35th birthday; and a few months after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, who he knew personally. He recounts the sorry history of race relations in this country, with an emphasis on the more recent history of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s, and particularly the watershed year of 1963, the year of his Letter from the Birmingham Jail (which is reprinted in full in the book.) (MLK was responding to a letter from prominent Alabama clergymen who were urging moderation. It is very difficult to find their letter on-line, even today, so I have attached it Alabama Clergy MLK 63001.)
King’s true genius was not only his rhetorical skills, in my opinion.
King knew grassroots organizing, and the politics of possibility as well as the realities of politics, formal and informal. He richly recounts the struggles in his book.
In the book he gives great credit to a minister most of us have likely never heard of: a man named Fred Shuttlesworth who built the Alabama base for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. “The courageous minister’s audacious public defiance of Bull Connor had become a source of inspiration and encouragement to Negroes throughout the South“, King says (pp 51-52).
The hard-hearted Bull Connor also receives some of the credit for the successes of 1963.
At page 132, King goes further: “I am reminded of something President Kennedy said to me at the White House following the signing of the Birmingham agreement. “Our judgment of Bull Connor should not be too hard,” he commented. “After all, in his way, he has done a good deal for civil-rights legislation this year.” King continues: “It was the people who moved their leaders, not the leaders who moved the people….”
King and the Civil Rights Movement worked with different issues at a different time in history than today’s Peace movement.
The Civil Rights Movement was fighting centuries of oppression; in the War and Peace environment of today, Peace leaders need to recognize that War has been successful, and re-fashion their arguments around the ultimate failure of War as a solution, especially in today’s and the future environment.
It is a difficult transition which we all have to make.
War kills.
Peace and justice are the only long term solutions.

#227 – Dick Bernard: The last truck out….

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Last night about 6:55 p.m. local time I turned on the TV to watch some evening news.
Rather than what I expected, I was watching the last combat units pulling out of Iraq into neighboring Kuwait. I sat transfixed by this until near 9 p.m. my time, and (if I recall rightly) 3:53 a.m. local time in Kuwait, August 19, 2010, when the last immense and other-worldly combat vehicle went through the border gate, which then closed behind it.
I felt I was witnessing history in the making.
At this moment, 5 a.m. local time on August 19, 2010, there is little on the internet news behind this screen I’m typing on. I’m sure this will rapidly change. NBC-MSNBC had the exclusive reporting rights on this one apparently because they possessed the technology to instantly cover the breaking story, which was secret until it actually happened.
Now the torrent of commentary and controversy will begin along all sorts of predicted trajectories. This was, after all, a withdrawal of the last specifically designated combat troops in Iraq, and 50,000 American troops remain in Iraq, and Afghanistan is the issue du jour. (Area map with Minnesota superimposed for scale is Iraq environs ca 2005001.)
But it is an historic event ranking, for me, with the time I stopped along highway 2 in northern Minnesota to listen to the account of “the Eagle has landed” on the moon (July 20, 1969); the early afternoon when I was in a science lab in Hallock MN when the PA announcement came that President Kennedy had been shot (November 22, 1963); the evening in 1991 when the car radio brought news that the U.S. had invaded Iraq in Desert Storm (January 16, 1991) (March, 1991, note from a GI there, to me, is Soldier letter 1991001); Afghanistan Oct 7 2001, and Baghdad (March 20, 2003); the iconic last helicopter out of Saigon (April 29, 1975)….
I will especially be watching to see how (not if, but how) the very odd “coalition” of the Far Right and Far Left will position on this particular historical development.
Neither Far Left or Far Right seem to have any time for President Obama these days, for precisely opposite reasons. They have joined forces in driving down his poll numbers – it is a perfect example (in my opinion) of the danger of drawing false conclusions from seemingly obvious data in polls. Lately “the fur has been flying” over a comment about the “professional Left” from the White House Press Secretary. Since I mostly “hang” with people over on the dark (left) side, and indeed watched last nights development on the news program of one of these “professional Lefties”, I’ve seen commentaries ad infinitum about that supposed slight a few days ago.
A friend, a couple of days ago, caught this unholy alliance idea pretty well, in a personal comment on another issue: “The truly interesting thing is how the left and the right see Obama…. One sees him as a “communist”, the other sees him in cahoots with Wall Street. Based on that alone he must be doing something right.”
Ironically (my opinion), President Obama is the voice of moderation, seeking some stability in this almost collapsed nation of ours, and this requires navigating extraordinarily rough seas.
So, I’ll watch and see how this all plays out.
Tonight, just by happenstance, I’m moderating an inaugural and small community conversation brought together by five of us to try to get into civil conversation about issues of the day. It will be an interesting experiment, hopefully the first of many such conversations of people of differing feelings and beliefs. (We gather at Peaceful United Methodist Church on Steepleview Rd in Woodbury if you want to join us – 7 p.m.)
What I witnessed on TV last night wasn’t on our agenda for tonight.
Tonight it likely will be.
Stay tuned.
(NOTE: I have other commentaries on the general issue. Most recent is a commentary on Afghanistan. Simply print the word in the Search Box. War is another category.)

#226 – Dick Bernard: Winning Last

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I arrived late for the Dakota County Softball League Championship Picnic on August 17, and as I got out of the car I heard the beginning of the singing of the Star Spangled Banner. I turned around and in front of me was the American flag, backlit by a brilliant sun, and as much instinctively as intentionally, I stopped in place, took off my baseball hat, and paid attention to the national anthem as beautifully sung by two young women somewhere in the park.
It was a perfect start to a perfect three hours on a pleasant Tuesday afternoon at Aronson Park in Lakeville MN.

During the Star Spangled Banner August 17, 2010


The event was, I guess one would say, the “World Series” for a bunch of truly exceptional adults, one of whom is my daughter, Heather (photo below). The program listed a dozen teams, roughly half in the “A” League, the other half in the “B”. Heather’s team was vying for 5th Place in their Division.

Heather Bernard August 17, 2010


After the national anthem, and before the games, came the picnic for about 400 of us: players, coaches, families and friends. Fried Chicken never tasted so good! Heather’s sisters and their families were there, as well as the family in whose home she lives with two other exceptional adults. We sometimes joke with Heather being “the Queen”. For sure, on Tuesday, she was! Her own cheering section was “in the stands”.
After the picnic came the game. Every player came to bat, and spent time as fielders. Can’t say I saw any double plays or ‘out of the park’ home runs, but I was truly at the World Series! Heather is a big sports fan. When she came up to bat, she did the routine, “knocking” the dirt off her sneakers; doing the stretching exercise with the bat before coming to the plate – the whole nine yards. She rapped a couple of near-hits. While in this particular game she didn’t actually reach base, it made no difference at all to anybody, including herself. She’d shown up and taken a cut!

The mighty Heather taking a cut at the Plate


Game over – each game lasts an hour – Heather’s team, Rave Red, was on the short end of an 8-4 final score. The way some people would see it, they came in last in the league.
But you wouldn’t know it from the players, the coaches, the fans in the ‘stands’. They were winners, as they congratulated the opposition, and ran the bases one last time for this season, and received their trophy for a truly winning season.

Heather receives her award


Before the game, I made a side comment to Jeff, who’s a good friend of mine, one of the volunteer coaches, and parent of one of the athletes.
“Without volunteers, this country of ours would collapse“, I said. He agreed. We are bombarded daily with all sorts of very bad news about us; it is good, sometimes, to take time to identify the good – and there’s lots of that, too.
So to all the unsung heroes, especially those folks who make things like the Dakota County Softball League happen, including the players on the field, I offer my heart-felt thanks and Congratulations!
You make my day.

Coach Jeff gives an Award to one of his players after the game.


Seen at a game in July, 2010


The sign on the car door says this: “Kate was born with a serious ability“.

#225 – Dick Bernard: Social Security celebrates a birthday

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Sunday, August 15, 2010, is the 75th birthday of the signing of the Social Security Act. Actually the day was a Wednesday, and there is more than ample history available at the Social Security website.
As a veteran recipient of the benefits of Social Security, and as a contributor to the program for many years as an employee, I have an obvious interest in the act.
As a person, I most often think of the Act in the context of my Grandfather Bernard, my Dad’s Dad. In his story is the story of both the history of and the need for a national system of income security.
Grandpa turned 65 on February 26, 1937. This happened to be virtually coincidental with the first actual payouts to Social Security recipients. Since this was a brand new program, he had likely contributed nothing to it. A heckuva deal. But life is a bit more complicated than that.
For many years, Grandpa was chief engineer in the flour mill in Grafton ND. He had a first-grade education, was a self-made and hard-working man, the “bread-winner” of the family, and proud of it. In context of the times, he was middle class. They owned a house, car, and were thrifty, saving money in the local bank. In 1925, he and Grandma took their only vacation that I know of: they spent a month back in the Quebec of his birth.
Life was going along well, that summer of 1925, when he was 53, and Grandma 44. These were the good old days, when heroic men fed their families and didn’t rely on the dole. Women stayed at home and raised the kids, and if you weren’t shiftless you worked for a living: no unemployment insurance or the like.
But then as now, unbeknownst to them, a curve ball was to deliver a strikeout to their best laid plans.
In the month of May, 1927, a couple of weeks before my Dad graduated from high school, two events happened within the same week in Grafton ND: the flour mill closed its doors forever; and the bank which held all of the family savings went under, leaving the family with no livelihood or savings. Dad had planned to go to college that fall, but those plans were delayed. Grandpa was 55, not the expected retirement age.
The Great Depression is usually marked as beginning in 1929. Theirs started two years earlier. Their youngest son, Frank, was still at home, 12 years old.
There is little historical record of how they survived the first half of the 1930s. Grandpa is said to have gotten some income from being a night watchman at the closed mill. He possibly received some income from a small pension resulting from service in the Spanish-American War in 1898-99 – a promise long-delayed by Congressional inertia. They probably got some assistance from relatives in the area, and they took in a couple of farm kids as boarders during some of the winter months. Some of the bank savings finally came back to them at about 10 cents on the dollar.
But when Grandpa qualified for Social Security in ’35, it was undoubtedly a god-send to the family, and it made possible a tiny house which they bought in Grafton, and lived in till they died in 1957 and 1963 respectively.
Today Grandpa’s generation is gone, and Dad’s is rapidly departing. Social Security has been a welcome reality in their lives.
I’m in the lucky generation to have the full benefits of Social Security.
The next generation – my kids – is much more vulnerable, and seems unaware of its vulnerability, and is courted to reject Social Security in favor of rugged individualism once again.
Ironically, the coalition to privatize social security seems to be some of the the youngers and the elders, for opposing reasons.
I hope they both wake up before the youngers experience the consequences of short-sightedness.
Grandpa thought he was secure, too.