#435 – Dick Bernard: But/And

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Directly related posts here; here; and here.
Tuesday night I was invited to a closing event of a well known program of Landmark Education, a world wide and well known personal improvement program.
I’m well acquainted with Landmark Education, having taken much of their curriculum 13 years ago. The event was an evening very well spent.
We were given a very simple exercise: to identify (my interpretation of the exercise) some decision making quandary of two options, separated by the word BUT.
A personal example of mine might be:
I’d like to lose a few pounds, BUT I like pie and ice cream (amongst a large array of such temptations)
There are endless variations on this quandary.
Then, the instructor asked us to replace the BUT with AND, so my statement would now become:
I’d like to lose a few pounds, AND I like pie and ice cream….
(I had my annual physical yesterday and the dreaded scale at the beginning of the process shows which of these has won. I wasn’t surprised.)
There followed an interesting discussion of the distinction (again, my interpretation) between these two statements.
When we use the BUT word in such matters, we are, in effect, making a decision: one option over the other. The word decision is in itself an interesting word. It shares a root with words like suicide, homicide, insecticide and on and on and on. When you decide something, you elect one fork in the road, and kill off the other.
Often a decision is made in anger, with frequent unpleasant results. Prisons are full of people who made decisions out of anger and killed somebody. (Whole societies can make decisions which ultimately cause their death, too. That includes our own American society, at this point in our history.)
The AND word connotes a right to choose, and in fact to change one’s mind. With choice, you’re not killing off other options.

Both BUT and AND have their merits and their problems; BUT, however, tends to be terminal. Deciding ones route tends to burn the bridge to the other route.
Before the exercise, the person who invited me and I were discussing some of the happenings in our respective lives. She happened to mention a meditation group that she had chosen to join, with some reservations, but had come to find very fulfilling for her.
In the course of the conversation, she mentioned a friend who had a weight problem, who was in the meditation group. In some manner, at some point, her friend chose to focus on a single meal each day, rather than look on the transformation as a 24 hour a day seven days a week task.
She took on her choice and over a period of time lost 35 pounds.
Apparently a very good choice.
I’m like everyone else, with plenty of BUTs impeding me in my life.
Time to replace a few of them, at least, with ANDs.
Maybe looking at that “pie and ice cream” as “sugar and fat” (which is what they are) will make a difference (I was going to say “can make a difference”, but that’s a cop out.)
As individuals, and as a society, we can make good choices or awful decisions.
We will choose what decision to make.

#434 – Barry Riesch: Reflections on 9-11

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Note from Dick Bernard: I know Barry Riesch from nine years involvement with the Minnesota chapter of the national organization Veterans for Peace. Barry served in the U.S. Army 1968-70 and was a Mortar man in Vietnam 1969-70. Barry has been the inspiration for an ever more successful Memorial Day commemorative at the Vietnam Memorial on the Capitol Grounds in St. Paul. The photo is from the most recent gathering in May, 2011 (click on it to enlarge). I am proud to be a member of Veterans for Peace.
This post is also comment #36 here.

Barry Riesch opens the 2011 Memorial Day commemoration at the Vietnam Memorial on the Capitol Grounds, St. Paul MN


Barry Riesch:
While it is important to take time to pause and reflect on the horrible events which occurred on September 11, 2011, it is also time to ask ourselves whether the price we and the world has paid as a result of the path our leaders chose to follow has been worth it.
I offer a few of the consequences: Loss of Civil Liberties; Loss of any real privacy with the establishment of massive security surveilance system with 850,000 Top Securty officals and contractors (as reported by the Washington Post and printed in the StarTribune); compromised America’s basic principles (like Habeus Corpus and the right not to be tortured); undermined our economy; weakend security; a conservative estimate three years ago of $3-5 trillion (not counting our latest excursion into Libya); 6,000 dead soldiers and 100,000 wounded, many suffering from multiple amputations, brain injury, and post traumatic stress (PTSD); 50% of returning veterans receiving some sort of disabilitty payment; 600,000 treated in veterans facilities (estimates of future disability payments and health care costs $600-900 billlion); social costs reflected in veteran suicides (which have topped 18 per day in recent years); traumatized children and family breakups; first war (Iraq) in history paid entirely on credit card thanks to Bush; unemployment and deficit, both threats to America’s future traced to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; increased defense spending and Bush tax cuts are largely why we went from a fiscal surplus of 2% GDP when Bush was elected to is perilous deficit and debt position today; direct government spending on those wars amounts to roughly $2 trillion- $17,000 for every US household, with bills yet to be received increasing this amount by more than 50%; macroeconomic weakness (disruption in the Middle East has led to higher oil prices thus forcing Americans to spend more on oil imports than on buying goods produced in the US); US Federal Reserve hid weaknesses by engineerig a housing bubble that led to a consumption boom which led to excessive indebtedness in real estate; Bush tried to undercut war costs by refusing basic expenditures for military (armored and mine-resistant vehicles and adequate health care for returning veterans); more than a million Iraqis have died directly or indirectly because of the war, even the most conservative studies say at least 137,000 civilians have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, 35,600 in Pakistan; among Iraqis alone there are 1.8 million refugeess and 1.7 million internally displaced people, a total of 7,800,00 war refugees and displaced persons- equivalent to the people of Connecticut and Kentucky fleeing their homes; both US invasions were to help restore Democracy but both now have more segregation today by gender and ethnicity.
Not all the consequences have been disastrous, as much of the Global War on Terrorism has been wasted on weapons that don’t work against enemies that don’t exist and now those resources are likely to be redeployed and the US will likely get more security by paying less.
These few examples of the price paid in getting to this point in the US and elsewhere have been enormous and mostly avoidable. These mistakes will be with us for a long time, maybe someday we will try a different approach. Not all of this can be attributed to George Bush as Barack Obama has continued to carry out the same policies.
*sources of information Brown University

#433 – Dick Bernard: "I DID IT!"

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Sunday we were at the “Annual Mass for Persons with DisAbilities”. one of whom was my daughter, Heather.
It was a very special afternoon, confirming eleven adult disabled in the Chapel at the St. Paul Seminary. The Church was filled with friends and family members.
The confirmands had assorted disabilities – for Heather, it is Down Syndrome.
It is folly to typecast a “disabled” person, but I think it can be safely said that those with relatively low mental ability tend to be less repressed than we so-called “normal” people.
So the kind of decorum a Bishop might usually expect in a church was not necessarily the order of the day Sunday afternoon.
There were many special times before, during and after the Mass.
My favorite came during the second reading, from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans 14:7-9.
A woman sitting in the front row came to the lectern to do the reading, and in a slow, steady but certain way, she read every word. To my hearing, she read the words perfectly.
Reading finished, she headed back towards her pew, and about half way there she loudly exclaimed “I DID IT!” Hardly ever had I heard such a joyous expression of joy and accomplishment.
Nothing later in the service, even the Bishops homily, or Heather’s part in the service, came even close to matching the reader’s expression of joy at her accomplishing her task.
After Mass we gathered for refreshments outside the Church.
Heather, who had performed her own part of the Mass first-rate, was proud and delighted.
I felt I was among persons far greater than I.
We can learn so much from the disabled.

Heather Bernard, September 11, 2011

#432 – Dick Bernard: 9-11-11 The First Day of the Rest of our Life as a People.

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NOTE SEP 12, 2011: This is becoming a voluminous post with a great number of comments. All flow from my reflection on Sep. 11, 2001, and the ten years after, here. I plan to keep this comments page up to date and current as any personal opinions are provided. Check back once in awhile. Directly related posts here; here; and here.
Almost all of what follows are individual comments received in the last three days from numerous individuals. I have included all comments that I received, responding to a few.
My personal reflections on 9-11 and the 10 years following were published on Friday, September 9, here. My Sep 10 post on Ed Asner as FDR directly relates to this. It is here.
This space reflects comments offered to that blog post, as well as other comments made in other venues by individuals I know, personally.
We can now choose to change the conversation, or continue with what caused us so much trouble the last ten years. Change will not be easy, for anyone. But we change, or we die.

Opening Ceremony at Minnesotans Standing Together, Minnesota State Capitol, Sunday, September 11, 2011


Minnesotans Standing Together (click on photo to enlarge) (Also see comment #38 below.)
1. Lori Sturdevant, Facebook, Sep 11
Experiencing the shared resolve Americans found 10 years ago gives me hope for today. So does the good work done by the Minnesota Council of Churches in organizing today’s moving Capitol commemoration of 9/11, which lifted up the value of diversity. There’s a great deal of good will on which to build a better state and country.
2. From Joyce Denn, Sep 11
17:42 of film completed three weeks after 9-11-01
Thanks, Adela, for posting this first – watch it and see if you can keep from crying, especially when thinking of the good will and solidarity that were squandered in the aftermath.
What’s wrong with this picture? here
3. Will Shapira in the Sep 11 St. Paul Pioneer Press:
On 9/11: Double down on our resolve
The 10th anniversary of 9/11 should, in my view, be much more than remembering where we were when we heard the shocking news and how we reacted a decade ago.
It must be a time to double down on our resolve to increase the pressure on President Obama and Congress to end the illegal and immoral wars that President Bush started in the days of rage and recrimination immediately after 9/11. And it must be a time to hold Mr. Obama to his 2008 campaign promise to end those wars.
It also must be a time to wipe off the law books once and for all the nefarious Patriot Act that Mr. Bush rammed through Congress in the post-9/11 days of chaos, and which Mr. Obama, in one of his infamous, off-putting capitulations, has now extended.
And in that same vein, it’s way past time for Mr. Obama to order the FBI to halt its illegal harassment of ordinary citizens exercising their constitutional rights of peacefully protesting war and advocating for social and economic justice.
It must be a time to increase our scrutiny of how our veterans are being treated once they come home, to make sure they get the medical care they need and help to transition back into productive, peaceful civilian lives and, where necessary, provide care for the families who still have loved ones on the fields of battle.
It must be a time to end torture in all of its forms and in all of its venues and to bring to justice its practitioners, past and present.
On a broader level, it must be a time to seriously examine our capitalist political and economic system, to see if it truly is providing “liberty and justice for all” and, if not, start to boldly examine some alternatives.
Finally, let’s hope that when we mark the 20th anniversary of 9/11, we can look back and remember this occasion as a starting point of our efforts to erect not only a monument and rising new structure at Ground Zero/Lower Manhattan but to build an America that will reach out to the peoples of the world – a peaceful and just America that they will not fear and hate.
That will be the lasting and most important legacy of 9/11.
Willard B. Shapira, Roseville
The writer is a member of Veterans for Peace and the Workers International League.
4. Prof. emeritus Joseph Schwartzberg Sep 9
Thanks for your latest blog. I read it with great interest and followed up on several of the links. Good work!
5. University Student Allison Stuewe, who was 11 on 9-11-01:
I so enjoyed reading your blog post! It really is incredible to think about how we have chosen as a country to respond to 9/11 and how it has changed our nation and, unfortunately, the world.
6. From the blogger Just Above Sunset:
This is VERY good. I have no idea what I’ll write about this. I’m putting it off until Saturday evening. But I may find I have nothing to say. Silence may be more respectful. [He did write a blog post after all.]
7. Jim Poradek, Sep 9, 2011:
just read your 9-11 post. I was curious to see how you approached it. I found it excellent – I imagine because it so closely mirrored my own feelings about the subsequent wars.
Jackie and I watched “Fair Game” last night. It’s the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson/Bush-WH- Iraq-war story. Even after all these years it is disturbing and distressing.
Using Netflix protocol your post and Fair Game both get 5 stars.
UPDATE Sep 17 (Click on photo to enlarge)
I was going through photos for a project and came on the attached photo. In the winter and spring of 2003 as it became clear that Bush was going to war – and did in March, we had weekly (sometimes more) demonstrations in Bloomington, Indiana. Of the photos I took, this has been a favorite because of the colorful diversity of signs and people. It was taken in early May before the school year ended. The Friends in Bloomington were always involved in anti-war and social justice issues. They provided the “War is not the answer!” sign the IU student is carrying. His companion was more creative.

Protest Bloomington IN early 2003


8. Anne Wisda, Sep 10, 2011:
THANKS FOR THIS POWERFUL AND INFORMATIVE SHARING.
WE MUST ALL PRAY AND ACT FOR PEACE IN OUR WORLD!
9. Rev. Lyle Christianson Sep 10, 2011:
Dick, because of other pressing issues I hesitated downloading and printing your extended comments, but glad I did. I share much the same feeling as you do. I have a special feeling for New York City after working there for one summer during college and spending a year there in graduate work at Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University.
Also, you may not know that Dorothy Anne and I were in Egypt on 9-11-01 and were privileged to note close-up the reaction of many in that nation as well as Jordan where we were forced to remain until we could obtain a flight back to New York. Among the people with whom we visited was a young Muslim who was scheduled in a day or two to fly to New York. I remember his expression of fear over how he would be treated in light of what had taken place. I wonder if fear is not what makes us do so many foolish things. [NOTE from Dick: My wife and I were in England post-9-11, late October. There had been some apprehension about following through on a long-booked plan, but we were very glad we went as scheduled.]
Further, religion has to do with our relation to our Creator (who is both hidden and revealed) and what we feel our Creator wants us to be and do. Religion also has to do with our relation to our neighbor. Therefore everyone has a religion. The question is whether or not one has a healthy religion that nurtures healthy relationships or unhealthy relationships. The world and our nation needs good and healthy religion as never before.
Best wishes to you, Dick, always.
10. Fred Johnson, Sep 10, 2011
A very well written and reasoned piece. Hopefully more than a few folks will be reading it!
11. Marion Brady, Sep 10, 2011
Thanks much, Dick.
Some time ago I cut out a comic strip drawn by Wiley (www.nonsequitor.com).
First frame:
[Little girl, with grandfather, walking dog]
“Sometimes I wonder how we got words. like where does ‘war’come from?”
[Grandfather]
“It’s a universal acronym.”]
Second frame:
[Little girl]
“An acronym of what??
[Grandfather]
“We Are Right.”]
Third frame:
Wordless. Little girl looking thoughtful.
Fourth frame:
[Little girl]
“Y’know, that stupidly makes some sense…
[Grandfather]
“I thought you’d like it…”
12. Beth Brownfield, Sep 10, 2011
Right on Dick!
Here’s what I’m involved in. Have had incredible results in the last week. From 6 congregations nationally passing our resolution it is now going to the board of trustees of our Unitarian Universalist Association for consideration for this coming year’s general assembly in Phoenix where we chose in 2010 to go to instead of boycotting. We are going to confront immigration/migration issues nationwide. Our business as usual is being suspended and there may be only one or so resolutions that are presented. Also they are planning a panel that will be part of the program, not an elective workshop in breakouts! IT IS A MIRACLE that we have connected the dots with the work of myself and another man in Peoria IL to bring this before our denomination (back in 2010!).
The Doctrine of Discovery is at the heart of this, our country’s greed, our domination of indigenous peoples, immigrants, our grab for resources no matter the cost. It is INCREDIBLY invasive and embedded. The Permanent Forum on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples has made this the focus of intense study in 2012 and all participating indigenous nations are writing reports on how the DOD has affected them historically and currently.
The Episcopalians have repudiated the DOD in 2010, the Quakers are doing it meeting by meeting, the World Council of Churches is just in the beginning stage of considering it.
13. From Commander of my local American Legion Post (I’m a long-time member)
Dick, As always your comments reflect deep thought, are very well presented,
and I appreciate reading them.
Your latest I’m going to have to go through a second time to fully absorb.
Like many people I often suspect I could do a much better job of running the
government than we’ve experienced over the past years. Then I usually, not always, regain
my senses and accept that many of those calling the shots, perhaps most, are much smarter
than I, and likely have enormously more knowledge on which to make the best decisions at the time.
I had a lot of issues with what went on during the Bush administration, and I’ve got a lot
of issues with Obama’s administration. God knows that I’m in almost weekly contact with
our two Senators and my Congresswoman. And at my age I’m picking the hills I’m willing to die over
carefully.
In closing, Dick, it’s great to have you as a member
13A. Dick: I chose to respond to the Commanders one, thus:
This one was, indeed, a long one…longer than anything I’ve written, and much more carefully written, too.
Of everything I paid note of in that post was the column I wrote in February, 2002, which was published in the Star Tribune April 20, 2002. (I actually wrote it for the 6 month anniversary of 9-11, which was March 11, and I thought that when that date passed they’d trash-canned it. But then I got the call that they were going to use it.)
Anyway, it is of huge significance to me that I, by that time an activist (the Afghanistan bombing pushed me over the edge), had so little awareness of “Iraq” as an issue that I didn’t even mention the word. After October 7, 2001, I attended lots and lots of assorted meetings and apparently Iraq was never even mentioned. And I was in the middle of the protesters.
My entire point is this: will we learn from our abundant mistakes of the last ten years, or are we going to repeat the tragedy that began after the attacks?
I note from the last Legion magazine that PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] is front and center (on the cover). That is a cost of war that isn’t included in the usual indices of cost of war.
My wife’s nephew just returned from a year in Afghanistan a couple of weeks ago. He’d been there for a year, and he came back safe. Issues like this one are not brought up at family gatherings.
On and on we go.
We change for the better, or we kill ourselves in the process.
Thanks for commenting.
14. Lucinda, on Sep 10
Your points and perspective are excellent.
15. Harriette on Sep. 10
Thank you for taking the time to write this sensitive piece on 9/11/01. We must make sure that future Americans remember, as Americans grieve with those who lost the heroes of 9/11/01. In centuries to come Americans will remember the day. It is up to us to make sure that future Americans remember.
16. John Jensen (on Facebook) Sep 10
Dick, thanks for sharing. Your welcome will never be worn out!! Today, the day before 9/11/11, I flew home to Omaha from Washington D.C. Thanks to “credible” reports of terrorist threats, I left my hotel in D.C. with guards at the elevators and where no vehicles were allowed near the hotel. At the airports in D.C. and in Chicago, I sat waiting to board, relieved that it was not Sunday, 9/11/11.
17. Candice Abel Van Eyck (on Facebook) Sep 10
Well said!!
18. Carol McCracken on Facebook Sep 11
The attacks were intended to break our spirit. Instead we have emerged stronger and more unified. We are more determined than ever to live our lives in freedom.
19. Frank Kroncke Sep 10
Appreciate your words.
Added Sep 13: Friends: Take a few minutes to watch this video. The young daughter of Al Hooper (long time friend and witness at our trial) gave her senior speech (in high school!). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHtJ76M0qG0
Added Sep 14: Ethics Daily.com a site worth reading.
20. Paul Miller Sep 10
good analysis,Dick, I concur that we experienced a decade of wrong minded actions, the collective analytical intelligence of our population seems to be at historical lows, you have to wonder what it would take to force us to see the reality that we have created
When will we Americans get a grip on reality?
21. Joyce Denn, Sep 11
http://woodbury.patch.com/articles/woodbury-resident-ny-native-recalls-911#photo-7682897
22. Judy Berglund, Facebook, Sep 11
Thirty-nine years ago today, I gave birth to my son. Daniel Wallace Berglund was born at 8:16 p.m. on Sept. 11, 1972 at St. Mary’s Hospital in Duluth. He weighed seven pounds and 13 ounces, and he was 21 inches long. The birth announcement said, “Greetings from the future president of the United States.” We set the bar high for you, Danny. And, hey! You’re only 39. You still have time!
23. Daniel Tutt, Facebook, Sep 11
While historians most unanimously point out the fact that 9/11 changed very little in terms of the movement of world history; for those of us that grew of age after 9/11, this event changed our subjective political, social, and spiritual lives in radical ways.
24. Michelle Witte, Sep 11
My main thoughts… Sad on how Al-Qaeda got its’ wish: our economy
tanked and we have more enemies than ever. And we allowed more soldiers to
be killed post 9/11 than were killed on 9/11. We over-reacted and took
toenail clippers away from passengers while only furthering the gaping
hole that spawns terrorists – growing poverty, injustice, greed and
religious righteousness. Put up a mirror America – are we better people
today than we were on 9/11? Or has our pettiness only grown? Prevention is
tough folks – let’s favor the long road vs. the short road. And that
message is true for the left as well – we bash Obama when he didn’t solve
America’s problems overnight. We need to do the tough stuff that takes
time – and creates sustainable peace.
25. From a friend who prefers to not share name:
Wonderful.
And by the way, I was not one who approved of invading Iraq… due largely to a cousin of mine who teaches in Czech Republic and had sent an alarming e-mail to some family members which included the “foreign perspective” of what was happening here. I guess I was the only one who paid attention to it, but he generates a lot of respect in our family and it caused me to go looking for information that wasn’t prominently displayed on the front page – which was there, for those who looked. So I was wearing a little sign that said “No Attack on Iraq,” and the mood (as you remember) was such in the country that I was almost expecting someone to slug me when I went out and about… (Also had a letter to the editor published criticizing a John Kline article – he of course was gung-ho to get into that war.) You’re right – the “crowd mentality” was really scary.
An interesting comment on Norway – however, the shooter was one of them, and Norway could hardly have attacked itself… Things may have been very different if he had been from Afghanistan, for example. From what I gathered when we were there, I would guess that all the Afghani refugees who live in Norway would not have been treated as well going forward… And of course Norway is a rich country, but not powerful enough to go starting major wars in the first place. Which makes your choices for getting along in the world a bit more limited…
25A. Response from Dick
Personally, I engaged in the pro-Peace bunch when we bombed Afghanistan in Oct 2001. That was a very lonely time for a peacenik – 6% of Americans agreed with me, so the polls said. That’s one of every 16 Americans. I could see no good coming out of the bombing. It was nothing altruistic. It just didn’t make any long term sense.
25B. Response back
I supported invading Afghanistan – and believe I would today. But when we first went in, the military teamed up so efficiently with the factions in the country who could help us, and were “kicking butt.” But THEN Bush decided – since he was suddenly getting so many accolades as the “War President” – to expand his reach. I think most people now don’t even remember how he was viewed in his first months in office. Half the country didn’t even think he’d been elected, and the media took every opportunity to make fun of his language-mangling, etc. It didn’t appear that he was going to be able to get anything done with Congress. Then (drum roll here…), 9-11. He was instantly a hero.
I have my own opinions about what made W tick. Before 9-11 he was stuck with trying to prove, not only to the country but also to his “Daddy,” that he was actually capable and relevant. But that changed in an instant. He became Respected and Important, and I think he honestly believed that because of his choices, history was going to credit him with keeping America safe going forward, and “exporting democracy” to the world (he is that simplistic). And of course – like Bachmann – God was out there telling him how to do it. (Well, not exactly like Bachmann, as God tells her husband, then he tells her… :\
And we should have stuck to our goal in Afghanistan – to destroy Al Qaida’s training camps and catch bin Laden and his buddies if we could. Then we should have gone home, not decided to try to remake the whole dang country in our image, or hang around because then we’d have a base from which to shoot missiles into Pakistan whenever we please… What a horrible waste.
I believe there are reasons to go to war – and that they’re few and far between. And that likely the hardest job of the President is to decide when it’s necessary. Bush was not up to that job – or to much else. But, when the voters elect the guy they’d “like to have a beer with”… we probably get what we deserve.
My opinion on this 9-11 anniversary :\
25C. Dick
I remember those days pretty vividly. I just could not see any good coming out of going to war, as we were. In the first place, the very idea of being able to eliminate terrorism in this huge world of ours made absolutely no sense. But the big problem was the Project for a New American Century and 9-11 gave the opportunity to start by securing “our” oil in the middle east. And on, and on, and on. I think I was right, but that doesn’t help much, now. I don’t think there is much mileage in being against GWBush. His supporters think he was a great man, whether or not he deserves the kudos. I think President Obama is dealing as best as he can with the mythology of the Bush years. We keep on. Thanks so much.
25D. Response back
And I very much respect your work for peace in the world. You may be right about Afghanistan – how does one know these things? We have to somewhat rely on the people who are privy to all the information we don’t have, and my point was that if our nation insists on voting for incompetents like Bush, we will continue to suffer the consequences. And look at the current crop that the Republicans are fielding! It’s terrifying. Tim Pawlenty at least had some necessary skills – even tho’ I detest the guy – but he was too “boring” and so tried to turn himself into a pretzel in his views to please all the nutjobs out there. And even that didn’t help him, in a year when the crazier (and more pseudo-religious) you are, the better your prospects, apparently.
We as a nation have seemed to learn nothing in the past ten years about the consequences of our votes, or about the fact that truth matters. Politics is just a vicious game where we’re all supposed to choose sides.
Two persons I know personally had letters to the editor in today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune:
26. Michael Andregg, St. Paul
An essential start is to stop invading countries that never attacked us. For example, we invaded Iraq on false pretenses for alleged reasons that have since been shown to be 100 percent inaccurate. Therefore we have murdered more than 100,000 innocent people in a country we still occupy.
Along with this came rationalizations for torture, systemic corrosion of constitutional liberties at home, and other un-American and often-illegal behaviors. All the propaganda in the world may fool a distracted and disengaged American public, but it cannot prevent resentment among our victims or extremism among their surviving relatives.
27. Harlan Smith, Roseville
If anything the United States says to other countries is readily interpreted as our lecturing them, it will be resented. We must instead be seen as inviting them to join us in something mutually beneficial.
At any time there are a large number of potentially conflicting relationships among national interests, values and basic ideas that could become violent, and at the same time a large number of relationships among them that could become mutually beneficial.
Historically, human nations and smaller groups of people have unconsciously stumbled into more of the conflicting relationships. It would be much wiser to to decide together how to develop instead those relationships that would be mutually beneficial.
There are always a large number of such relationships that could be developed it we put our heads together.
28. seen Sep. 12, forwarded by a relative, from another relative, whose son co-made this video Sep. 14, 2001:
Lady Liberty
29. seen Sep. 12, from a friend who’s a Catholic Parish Priest in New Mexico:
Yes, I am still part of the resistance. Thank you for your blog. Very much my sentiments as well.
I am a pastor now and today was a very difficult day for me. Our country – our church is so divided. Preaching is like walking in a mine field.
Peace and Good in Christ,
30. Joyce Denn, Sep 12
[My friends] Mom frequently talks of her hostility to FDR – her parents hated him because of the influx of people into their Midwestern town who were working for the CCC and other public works programs. I pointed out to her that those people had money to spend because of FDR, and they patronized local businesses and helped the local economy recover. She had to admit that he did help the economy, but, she still hated him – she’s a Republican to the core, even though she thoroughly dislikes the current crop of Republicans.
An older coworker told me she hated FDR because the rural electrification program didn’t quite reach her parents’ farm; again, I pointed out that it was the start of electricity reaching every rural area, but, it didn’t reach her farm, so FDR was bad in her view. What can I say – this same woman once told me that all Jews are wealthy despite the evidence (me) standing right in front of her.
30A. Dick responds:
Everyone has their stories.
In 1993, my Aunt Mary, who spent most of the years 1913-right after WWII on the home farm where my mother grew up, wrote her memories of growing up and living on the farm. In my family history, Pioneers, compiled in 2005, she says this on page 136: “I don’t remember a great deal about political discussions. I do remember Dad [Grandpa, to me], had no time for F. D. Roosevelt because he kept his taxes paid. He had no chance to get a WPA [Works Progress Administration] job for extra cash which he could have used. I guess the main reason Dad got upset over FDRoosevelt was that loafers who were capable of earning a living got the paying jobs, such as foreman of the road crews.”
Grandpa was a go-getter in his early years. In the 1920s he was becoming a success. In 1927 he ran, unsuccessfully and much against his wife’s wishes, for public office. But the 1930s ended up not being kind to him. I gathered that he lost much of his expanding farm because he couldn’t pay for it; a teacher daughter paid land taxes at one point in time to save even the original land. I was born after the Great Depression, and by then he and Grandma were just small poor farmers, eking out a living. One visible reminder of the Depression at the farm is an old grove of cottonwood trees planted by the CCC [Civilian Conservation Corps]. I wrote about it some years ago, here.
31. Harriette Sep 12
And the deaths from cleanup and helping others continue. The 60 Minutes program said it all on Sunday. Thank you Dick.
32. Lydia Howell Sep 12
This week’s CATALYST, Thur Sept.15, 9 am CDT on KFAI [Minneapolis-St. Paul] (also, after broadcast, archived at www.kfai.org
will focus on Sept.11th from a progressive point of view–a counter to the relentless bs of the last few days.
NOTE: I believe this can also be accessed live on-line at time of broadcast.
33. Mary Ann Maher Sep 12
NOTE: Going through my 9-11 file today I found an e-letter sent by my sister Mary Ann on September 12, 2001MaryAnn9-12-01001. It speaks for itself.
Mary Ann: That’s fine even though I notice that I had ‘tears in my ears’ [mistake in the e-mail – should have been ‘eyes’]! I wonder and hope that September 11, 2011 will perhaps be the beginning of our ability as a country to regroup and move forward….all of us know, intellectually, that the value in reliving things past is to avoid repeats but somehow there has been a little too much energy spent on ‘paying em back’ and moving in the shadows of fear.
33A. Response from Dick: The Santayana quote (“those who cannot remember the past…”) which begins my post on 9-11 meant to me that the last ten years should open our eyes to the folly of our re-actions after 9-11. We basically ruined our society and we will have difficulty recovering. At the same time, we seem not to have well learned our lesson, and if we haven’t, we are “doomed to repeat it”, but it will only be worse and worse and worse.
34. (rec’d Sep 13) From childhood classmate who prefers that name not be used because of work with a private sector corporation which has many federal contracts.
Interesting commentary. Let me offer a couple of corrections.
(1) – JHU-APL [Johns Hopkins University – Applied Physics Lab, a U.S. government funded institution] was tasked to go into Iraq, once we had troops on the ground, and make an assessment of the death toll from the initial “Shock and Awe”. Their assessment was that approximately 640,000 Iraqis could not be accounted for. Add to that the tracking of daily death tolls during the remainder of the war, which reached about 140,000+ before the powers that control the news media in this country decided that they didn’t want that information broadcast and you have death toll of around 780,000.
(2) – The planning for the Iraq war started at the first cabinet meeting after the Bush administration took office. An ardent objector to the war was the Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O’Neill. His continued objections and other results of his independent thinking resulted in his firing. If you Google Paul, you will find the following:
“O’Neill was appointed Secretary of the Treasury by George W. Bush. O’Neill was an outspoken member of the administration, often saying things to the press that went against the administration’s party line, and doing unusual things like taking a tour of Africa with singer Bono.
A report commissioned in 2002 by O’Neill, while he was Treasury Secretary, suggested the United States faced future federal budget deficits of more than US$ 500 billion. The report also suggested that sharp tax increases, massive spending cuts, or both would be unavoidable if the United States were to meet benefit promises to its future generations. The study estimated that closing the budget gap would require the equivalent of an immediate and permanent 66 percent across-the-board income tax increase. The Bush administration left the findings out of the 2004 annual budget report published in February 2003.[citation needed]
O’Neill’s private feuds with Bush’s tax cut policies and his push to further investigate alleged al-Qaeda funding from some American-allied countries, as well as his objection to the invasion of Iraq in the name of the war on terror – that he considered as nothing but a simple excuse for a war decided long before by neoconservative elements of the first Bush Administration – led to him being fired[1] in 2002 and replaced with John W. Snow.”
Another thing to think about is the ineptness of the American voter. They do very little research on subjects or persons to be voted on; are easily swayed and, as of late, have had a “throw the bums out” attitude. The result of that last election has spawned a lot of voter remorse. It is my hope that they will again throw out the bums they voted in last time so that we can get this nation back on track.
Added Sep 15: I had sent you comments relating to the notion that the Bush administration had intended to invade Iraq from the time they took office. Just finished reading an article in the September issue of National Defense magazine. The subject was Defense Energy. In the article it points out that “Before invading Iraq in 2003, the Pentagon spent tens of millions of dollars building a pipeline to ensure fuel supplies for U.S. forces once they entered the country”. You’ve got to know that took some time. The article goes on to say that “Securing access to fuel remains a key component of military training”.
That article adds ammunition to the conspiracy theorists position that the Bush administration intentionally ignored the August 18th [2001] memo predicting 9-11 and let it happen in order to have an excuse to invade Iraq and show Dad [George H. W. Bush] how it should have been done during Desert Storm [in 1991].
34A. Dick’s response:
I knew of the higher Iraqi casualty estimates from JHU-APL and other sources from reports early on. For this blog post I deliberately elected to use conservative casualty numbers from sources that seemed to be regularly trusted by the main-stream media. Even my numbers marked a civilian catastrophe in Iraq as a result of the war. Iraq was a country roughly the size and population of California, and it has been decimated in the last ten years.
Paul O’Neill’s book recounting his time in the Bush administration is still available. Link is here.
Sad but very true is my friends final comment about the American voter. We have got, and we will get, exactly what we deserve representing us in government, if we don’t pay very close attention.
35. Kathy Garvey Sep 14
Thank you very much for sending the student essays, I loved the one that said “if I would have known I would have told you it was going to happen “, and the one that said “I hope you are felling better ..I lost my glasses so I am not feeling well”.
NOTE: Kathy was a 5th grade public school teacher for many years. After 9-11-01, as doubtless millions of teachers did, everywhere, Kathy gave her students an opportunity to write about their feelings. This happened on September 12, 2001; September 18, 2001 (letters to New York City students); and January 18, 2002. She sent copies of these letters to me, and I saved them, and at her request recently sent the copies back to her. She relates two of many quotes in those from-the-heart letters at a troubled time.
Here is a drawing of an American flag by another of those 5th graders in October, 2001.

Flag by Evergreen Park School 5th grader, Lester, October, 2001


36. Barry Riesch
Barry was in the U.S. Army 1968-70, and he was a Mortar man in Vietnam 1969-70. He is a long-time leader of the Twin Cities chapter of Veterans for Peace. His comments on the anniversary of 9-11 are here.
37. Dr. Michael Knox, U.S. Peace Memorial Foundation
Thanks for sharing your 9/11 thoughts.
In addition to appearing at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center on Sunday [Sep 11], I also addressed a couple hundred people at the Islamic Community of Tampa for their 911 Remembrance on Saturday. Both talks were well received except that I had a heckler at the Performing Arts Center. A woman stood, pointed her finger at me, and shouted “the only reason you can say such things is that my son died fighting in a war to protect your right to free speech.” How sad. I was the only one heckled and everyone said I handled it very well, but my hands were trembling for awhile.
I am getting some local news coverage (a mixed blessing) and a request for an interview on a community radio station.
(AddedSep 14) The two events I spoke at last weekend were interfaith. A couple of the preachers came up afterwords and thanked me for saying things that they couldn’t get away with saying.
38. Dr. Michael Andregg, Sep 15
Behind the photo on your blog about 9/11 [the photo at the beginning of this post], blocked by the elaborate stage and the eminent dignitaries (including much of the religious and political leadership of the Twin Cities) who mouthed sweet nothings while America murders innocent people abroad, were the people who are REALLY trying to deal with 9/11, in this case the MN 9/11 Truth group. It’s a member of MAP [MN Alliance of Peacemakers] too, but gets very little value from MAP due to the general failure of the “peace community” to come to grips with what 9/11 means. [NOTE: View Dr. Andregg’s Rethinking 911 online here.]
It is very rare when hard scientific and other evidence can PROVE who used propaganda and psychological operations to start a global war. 9/11 provides a very rare opportunity for those who care to unravel exactly who is imposing endless wars on a supine US Congress, and much detail about how they did it.
Yet most peace groups, and most peace people including the notable Noam Chomsky are in deep, deep denial about all of that. So deep that most refuse to even examine that evidence I allude to. So they nibble at the margins of the larger problem, guaranteed to fail like those who travel to the SOA each fall. Every year those nice people fail to achieve their relatively tiny mission, and every year they repeat the same failed methods. Remember what Einstein said about that? We teach our students to think failure is success – it is embarrassing. And most of those nice people are ‘too busy’ to spend even one hour learning the truth about 9/11. This is a shame upon the peace community, because they are not really too busy – they are actually too timid to deal with the reality of evil in our time.
Best wishes always, with your important work and in life.
#39. William Cox offered this excellent lecture by theologian Marcus Borg
Dick, here is the the link for Marcus Borg’s presentation at Westminster Forum on “Sneaking Christian.”
39A. Mike Haasl commented on Marcus Borg and his work
HI Dick, If this was the talk Marcus Borg gave last March-April [it was], I heard it on the radio and I thought it was excellent also.
Borg has written some excellent books as well.
Thanks.
His book website is here.
I read and often refer to Jesus: A New Vision. I understand that his best-seller Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time is also excellent. Looks like he’s got a lot of good ones.

#431 – Dick Bernard: Ed Asner as FDR

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Early this week my wife heard on public radio that Ed Asner, co-star of the Mary Tyler Moore show, would be doing a one-man show the evening of September 9. She was interested in going and for me that was a non-controversial recommendation. I went down to get tickets in person, and by that time, on Wednesday, the only seats left, except a few with obstructed vision, were in the very last row of the top balcony of the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul.
Friday night, in that last row, high above the stage, we saw a phenomenal nearly two-hour show, where Ed Asner replayed 24 years of Roosevelt’s career, from Polio in 1921 through his last trip and death in Warm Springs GA in April, 1945. There is no replay of the show, at least in the Twin Cities. It was a single performance. At the beginning of the performance the announcer said that an interview is archived on Minnesota Public Radio. The entire fascinating interview – nearly an hour – is accessible here.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt is much too large a character for this blog space, as well as for a one hour forty minute program of excerpts performed by Asner. But if you hear Ed Asner as FDR is coming to your town, make it a point to attend.
Roosevelt was viewed as a “Traitor to his Class“, one of the book titles on sale at the theater.
Neither was he universally adored by the people whose future he worked to preserve. People then, like people today, often do not have a long view of their own best interests and are easily exploited. As a family historian, I can tell stories about my own relatives, who were of the farming and labor class. They all had their own reasons….
Roosevelt suffered under all of the differences of opinions and constraints that hem in all U.S. Presidents in what is at one and the same time the most powerful and the most problematic position in the world.
He was attacked and obstructed by his opposition.
He demonstrated, however, how a President does help set a national tone, whether with or without party support.
Twenty-four hours earlier we had watched President Obama speaking to a frankly hostile Congress about crucial issues facing the United States now.
As I sat watching Mr. Asner speak from and around the very simple set dominated by a Presidential desk in the Oval Office, I thought about President Obama, the current occupant of the oval office.
Mr. Roosevelt was patrician, perhaps even considered above the job of President, and most particularly traitorous to some in his upper class kin, as the book title suggests.
Mr. Obama, on the other hand, comes from the opposite pole in our society: the first African-American President, and one who basically grew up in a single-parent family.
I noticed, when Mr. Obama was talking to Congress (and particularly the nation) he was firm but not dramatic, as Roosevelt might have been.
I believe that President Obama’s somewhat nuanced address was intentional and necessary to fit the circumstances of this time in our history. We are not post-racial. We may never be post-racial….
Oh, if the presidency was as easy as we all would like to pretend.
Thankfully there are people like President Roosevelt and President Obama who stepped up to the plate to serve.
UPDATE Sep 11, 2011:
After writing this post I happened upon a two hour History Channel special on the death of Osama bin Laden in May, 2011. It was a fascinating two hours. Distilled to its essence, President Obama’s advisors gave odds of maybe 40 to 50% that bin Laden was the mysterious man in the compound at Abbottabad. All decisions ultimately were the Presidents. Had something gone wrong, or the quarry been other than bin Laden, it would have been the Presidents fault (as President Carter accepted full responsibility for the disastrous attempt to free the hostages in Teheran in 1979). On the other hand, success does not necessarily bring kudos. Second-guessing what was done, and how, or taking credit for the success are also common. Politics is never completely clear and above board.

#430 – Dick Bernard: 9-11-01 to 9-11-11. Have we learned anything these last ten years?

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UPDATE September 12, 2011: There have been a large number of comments on this post. They are in a separate post for September 11, 2011, here. Additional comments will be added to this post, as received.
September 9, 2011
Dear Family and Friends:
One of the indelible memories of my life came on my 60th birthday, May 4, 2000. We spent the entire day at the horrific Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Poland. Entering one of the first buildings with the awful artifacts of the final solution – hair, shoes, suitcases… – was a sign with this quotation:
“Those who
cannot remember the past,
are condemned to repeat it.”
George Santayana
We Americans – every one of us – have created what became the ten years after 9-11. We are well advised to remember Santayana’s admonition as our future begins with President Obama’s address to Congress a few hours ago.
Everyone has their own perspective.
Here’s how I remember the last ten years, and how I hope we work for a better future.
*
Here are two snapshots I took of the as-yet incomplete twin towers of the World Trade Center 39 years ago, in late June, 1972. (click to enlarge). (The Statue of Liberty photos later in this post were taken the same day.) This was my first and to date only visit to New York City. I remember the day vividly.

Twin Towers nearing completion late June, 1972 (see construction equipment on top of one of the towers)


New York City skyline from ferry enroute to Statue of Liberty late June, 1972


I also remember vividly 9-11-01: The death toll that day was approximately 3,000. Each of those people died tragically and needlessly. This doesn’t make them unusual. Thousands of others die tragically and needlessly every day, everywhere. How we have elected to hang onto the circumstances of the death of these 3000, and what it has done to us as a nation, is what makes this ten year commemoration unusual. (See NOTE FROM MADELINE SIMON at the end of this post).
The ten years since 9-11-01 are ten years we should all also remember vividly:
– We’ve been in two wars, now ten years old, with no end in sight;
the price of 9-11 has been dreadful;
over 100,000 dead in Iraq, 25,000 in Afghanistan; – hundreds of thousands of people displaced; plenty of anger against the United States by these people;
– over 6,000 U.S. dead in these wars;
– Over 3 trillion of our dollars ($3,000,000,000,000) spent, not counting huge and certain future costs even if the wars were to stop today;
– incalculable ruin to our national reputation – a reservoir of ill-will which will not be forgotten.
And the War continues….
In my opinion it need not have been this way:
Here’s my personal recollection written a few days after 9-11: September 17 and 24, 2001, a letter to family and friends reflecting on 9-11-01. (Entire letter here Post 9-11-01001.)
9-11-01 was my second day on the job as a volunteer on a Habitat for Humanity house in south Minneapolis. A large crew of us from Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis volunteered for one or more days during our two week commitment. Per previous plans, Cathy, my wife, and son-in-law John also joined that crew the week of 9-11. I was there the first week.

Habitat Home Stevens Ave S Minneapolis MN Sep 11, 2001


After 9-11 we were overrun with unexpected volunteers coming off the street to help – their way of dealing with grief, I suppose.
This urge to do something positive was a very normal immediate outcome of the shock of 9-11, as it is a normal response after any tragedy.
For many years I have kept a handout from a long-ago workshop I attended which explains the normal human response to crisis very well (click to enlarge). Note: the time period to recovery is described in months, not years:

OUR RESPONSE POST-9-11-01
Rather than normal and positive resolution of grief, and closure, after 9-11-01 we in the U.S. chose to go to war. It was and is a disastrous decision.
We Americans* almost unanimously supported war as a remedy. Afghanistan Oct 7 2001001
One wonders what would have happened had we chosen to respond as Norway did in the wake of their July 22, 2011, terrorist attack.

After 9-11 we were largely kept in the dark about specifics of war plans. Five months after 9-11, a column (2002001) I wrote for the Minneapolis Star Tribune (published April 20, 2002), does not even mention the word “Iraq”. Iraq was not on my radar screen then, and I was an engaged citizen then.
In April, 2002, the official roll-out of the Iraq War was nearly a year away.
But we now know the Bush administration focus had almost instantly shifted to Iraq after 9-11, even though Iraq, and no Iraqis, were involved in 9-11. We took the deadly fork in the national road which we still live with today.
At the same time we launched this war, we were encouraged to get on with life, to go shopping, and we happily obliged during the decade. Vice-President Richard Cheney famously noted that “deficits don’t matter….” (see 18th para beginning “In his own account…”).
War almost instantly became an opportunity to implement the dreams of the Project for a New American Century. Its principles are worth rereading, as are the names of its signatories. Most of its signatories likely still believe its false premise: America once and forever King of the World. Too many of us still have visions of a permanent American empire. (My opinion: We could not effectively conquer Iraq, a place similar in size and population to California. Our vision of world dominance was false then, and still is. It is rapidly killing us.)
In October, 2002, Congress issued what turned out to be a blank check to wage war on the national credit card. (You can see how the political parties voted on that resolution in 2002 at the preceding link.)
We, the people approved that action; indeed, it can fairly be said that we insisted on war. It was politically very dangerous for a politician to be against this War on “terrorists”. We the people bought the idea of war, and thus we own its consequences.
We’re still at war in Afghanistan, the place we attacked first, 10 years ago. Much of our national debt flows from war, not only unpaid for by any national sacrifice when it happened, but accompanied by huge and continuing tax cuts for everybody; and unfunded, large and politically popular Medicare improvements. To this day, we refuse to pay for that credit card debt of ours. As a nation we are still very deep in denial.
We effectively demand even more tax cuts and to slash our government (our state and national infrastructure) even further, rather than using our still great national wealth to work on reducing our debt. Going broke is a deliberate political strategy of the many current government leaders who follow Grover Norquist, whose anti-tax mantra has long been to starve government “until it can be drowned in the bathtub”. There is no negotiating with such an ideology.
We didn’t know it 9-11-01, but 2001-2011 became a highly radical Republican decade all the way up to the present moment where the avowed and very public aim of the Republican leadership is to make certain that President Obama fails to generate jobs for national recovery. “Give us another chance”, they seem to say. “See him fail.” The same characters in charge will bring the same results as in the past, I say. Watch their real response to the Presidents request last night over the next months to discern their priorities.
The Republican leadership of the last 20 or so years is not cut from the same Republican cloth as my father’s or grandfather’s generation, nor my own. The current Republican leadership bunch worships power and control for its own sake. (For a dozen years my own political “best friend” was a former Republican Governor until he passed away several years ago. He would not be welcome in today’s Republican party.)
Today’s Republican strategy is led by amoral radicals** whose sole interest is permanent majority and raw power, rather than the long-term health of this country.

Ten years after 9-11, we’re still at it even though, for all intents and purposes, our country went bankrupt “going shopping” for everything we desired, getting big tax breaks and unpaid for benefit increases, and making war on credit***.
Now the narrative that I hear from the political radical right about our current national malaise is: “It’s all Obama’s fault, just give us another chance….”
This is insane.
So, what does this all mean? I removed from the title of this post these words: “A squandered decade.” But that is exactly what 2001-2011 has been: a squandered decade. And we continue the waste.
When will we Americans get a grip on reality?
Ten years ago we were caught unawares, and our emotions were easily manipulated and used.
Will the coming ten years be more of the same?
We are still “going shopping”.
Ten years from now, where will we be?
Are we going to continue down the same destructive road which has all but destroyed us; or will we commit to positive change? It is we citizens who will decide the future of our children and the generations to follow.
It is we as individuals who will be determining the answer to that question.

Same former Habitat house in South Minneapolis Sep 11, 2010. It continues to look the same in September, 2011, and to my knowledge remains occupied by the same Somali family for whom it was built ten years ago.


Statue of Liberty New York City harbor late June, 1972


Joni and Tom Bernard at Statue of Liberty, late June, 1972


NOTE FROM MADELINE SIMON received on August 8 prior to publication of this post, and included with her permission. Madeline is a long-time good friend, very active in Justice and social concerns issues with her Church. I met her through my involvement with the Minnesota Alliance of Peacemakers. She sent this item to persons she knows:
Last night, I happened to catch part of [PBS] Frontline, titled “Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero.” [NOTE: this is can be watched online here] Representatives, particularly clergy, from the three major religions all talked about the very real, scary dark side of religious zeal, equally lethal in their respective religions. One, who shared the podium at a 9/11 memorial service with clergy from other religious traditions became the receiver of hate mail from members of his own clergy. They were incensed that he would give any degree of validity to another religion and its followers, and he was asked to resign as a minister of their absolute truth faith.
One woman related that in an interview with Putin, he said that to the 9/11 hijackers, the people in the towers were “just dust.” In the Nazi era, Jews were considered less than human by some supposed Christians; in the U.S. pre-civil rights era, some Christians considered blacks less than human; and some Israeli Jews treat Palestinians similarly. Much evil has been done throughout history in the name of God, and it continues today.
No doubt that the extreme religious right in our country is dangerous, used and exceedingly well-funded by greedy corporate America who demand laissez faire–no government-by-the-people regulation of their excesses, and they should not be allowed to control government at any level. Our government, federal and local, are already dysfunctional, preferring to be insanely destructive rather than lose power in the interest of the common good.
We have much important work to do before the next election, none being so important as reminding the country of our common humanity, the inherent worth and dignity of every person, and our interdependence, on each other and the well-being of our small planet. As Unitarian Universalists and a 501(c)(3) religious organization, we can’t advocate for or against candidates, but issues are fair game!!!
FOOTNOTES:
* – This commentary is written to “we, the people”. We are a society that likes to blame somebody else for our problems. The collective credit or blame lies with everyone of us, so long as we are fortunate enough to have a democracy (that is at risk).
** – “ends justify the means, politics is war, winning is all that matters” seems the dominant ethic. It is amazing, and very discouraging, to see the kind of racist, false and malicious information that is passed along, computer to computer, these days. Media advertising is as bad. It is far worse on the Republican side than on the Democrat. A recently retired 30-year GOP staff member in Washington recently wrote very candidly about this problem. You can read it here.
*** – even considering today’s relatively high unemployment, America is an immensely wealthy nation with far more than sufficient resources to recover from a problem we never should have gotten into. But to do so requires our political will, and the congressional leadership feels the problem is more beneficial to their interests than a solution.
There are many directly related posts, if you wish, beginning with June 27, 2011:
I will write a followup to this post, most likely on Monday, September 12, 2011
June 27, 2011: Killing the President, and many posts in the weeks that followed.
July 23, 2009: International Peace Garden

#429 – Dick Bernard: Let's have some kind words for the United States Post Office

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UPDATE Sep 10, 2011: There have been some interesting comments particularly relating to my comments about the Sykeston ND postoffice. They are included at the end of this post. At the time I knew Sykeston, its population was perhaps 225-250 fine people.
UPDATE Sep 12, 2011: Subsequent to this post, I was made aware of an interesting explanation of this supposed problem which has not been publicized. It is here.
UPDATE Sep 20, 2011: Yahoo news plus related items
*
Yesterdays news about the travails of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) was no surprise.
I could see it coming earlier this summer when our normal mail delivery time changed from early afternoon to early evening. One day I was at the mailbox when the postman came by, and I asked about the change. He said that the length of their routes had been drastically increased and that they had no choice in the matter.
As to mail he was delivering, increasingly it has been what we would consider “junk” – and that’s not the mail carriers fault. You know what shows up in your mail box. “Real” letters, with handwritten addresses and stamps are very rare these days, replaced by e-letters, which themselves have been replaced by facebook entries, by twitter, by this or that or the other electronic means. Because there are so many mysterious alternative means to communicate, as an older citizen I lament that we have more ways to communicate less….
If it weren’t for junk mail and bills (we haven’t gone paperless yet), there would seem to be little need for a post office.
It is a sad development for me and, I think, for us.
I happen to be a big fan of postal workers and of ‘real’ letters.
I spend a lot of time in line at the local post office (Woodbury MN), and after a while you get to know the folks behind the counter. Theirs is not always a pleasant job. Those of us in line can be a real pain. I much prefer the human face and voice of the postal worker to the machine that dispenses postage (after you correctly follow its orders). I use the machines also; I prefer the people.
Ironically, coincident with the news of the USPS travails I have been mailing the first copies of a just completed 475 page book which consists almost entirely of handwritten letters from my grandparents relatives in rural Wisconsin in 1905-06 (letters) and 1907-13 (postal cards). All of these had been carefully kept by Grandma. They helped alleviate the loneliness of a new home on North Dakota’s rural prairie.
Those were the days when posting a letter was a serious and frequent business: it was a main means of personal communication. Telegraph could be used to deal with emergencies. During 1905-06 the Wisconsin folks got telephone, but it would be some time before that became part of rural North Dakota.
This ordinary farm family of my ancestors, mostly grandma’s sisters, but others as well, hand-wrote over 100 legible and literate letters in 1905-06. Those letters are the essence of the book.
They always wrote in pencil, often by candle-light. One letter revealed that the 600 mile trip of a letter from one farm to the other took only two days. In those years, the mail was carried to and from the farm by horse and buggy, then by railroad, and carried very efficiently.
A 1913-14 pocket calendar kept by my grandfather, incorporated into the book, said a letter mailed in New York City would reach St. Paul MN in 34 1/2 hours; from New York to Seattle, 94 3/4 hours. New York City was the apparent center of the universe. (The chart includes Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco, but not Los Angeles or San Diego.) PostalRegs1913001
Postage was 2 cents an ounce; 1 cent for a postal card.
There were formal procedures, but others were quite casual. It must’ve taken a creative postal worker to decipher exactly where some letters were to be delivered – persons often had rather casual notions of what was a proper mailing address – and usually there were no return addresses. No doubt many dead letters took awhile to reach their intended destination.
Until about 1907, postal regulations did not allow writing on the address side of postal cards. When those regulations were changed, enterprising letter writers wrote almost microscopically to fill the available tiny space. It probably helped that the receivers of these letters were mostly in their 20s, better eyes.
Now the Postal Service is in apparent crisis. It will survive, largely because of the hard-working and dedicated men and women who put up with us every day.
I wish them all well.
(A story about the postcards can be found here.)
A brief memory: my first memory of a real post office is right after WWII, when I was perhaps six years old. We had moved to the tiny town of Sykeston ND, one of those places with a grain elevator on a spur railroad line, seven miles or so from the neighboring towns.
A single train came through this town each day: westbound in the morning; eastbound in the afternoon. It delivered packages and implements and such for farmers, hauled grain cars, had room for a few passengers, and on-board was someone who sorted the mail.
Our neighbor, I believe his name was Mr. Spitzer, was the designated person to meet the train for the local postoffice. He had a very large (or so it appeared to me) push cart, with two high metal wheels and a flat carrying surface. It was designed such that it could be easily pushed or pulled by a human.
When the train came through, a number of sacks of mail were off-loaded onto his hand-truck. In my memory, these were fairly large gray canvas bags with an open end secured with a draw string. They were much like duffel bags we later had in the Army. There might be several of these filled bags, depending on the day.
Mr. Spitzer would roll the cart the block or so to the Post Office, and the postmaster, Mr. Sondag, would begin the process of distributing the mail into the individual post boxes. These were boxes with small glass windows, and as I recall, combination locks. One could see when a letter popped into the box!
Townspeople would gather to see if they had any mail. It was a rather exciting time of day.
At some point, Mr. Sondag would finish his work, people would see if they had any mail, and everyone would go their separate ways, the days anticipation (or disappointment) over….
UPDATE:
Anne Curtin, whose Dad was a rural letter carrier in the Sykeston area for many years during the time period described, sent this response:
I did enjoy your blog and agree with your assessment. Our legislators have not helped keep the post office solvent.
Since my dad was a rural mail carrier from about the time I was born, my memories of the role of the post office meant occasionally waiting for him to finish sorting the mail and then we could ride with him on the route. In the spring, he often had live baby chicks making lots of noise in the back of the vehicle. That meant going up to the houses to deliver them. There were also times when the post office was alive with the sounds of live animals. Often at Christmas time, there would be a ham or other gifts at the mailbox for the carrier.
The post office was definitely a social gathering place when many people waited for the mail to be sorted to the various boxes. There was no delivery in small towns – perhaps there never has been. You often read that people fight to keep their post office as it is a distinction to have ones own address and a time/place to find out how your neighbors were doing.
From Bruce Fisher:
The handwritten envelope is indeed a rarity. But once in awhile I get a letter in a hand written envelope. Its usually some sort of hate mail directed at me for a letter or comment I sent to the Strib [Minneapolis Star Tribune] that was published. It usually pertains to something I wrote about the Iraq or Afghan wars or man made global warming.
The letters usually do not have a return address, although I do have one admirer who does supply a return address. He’s from Sandstone [MN] and has several times sent me scripture and verse on going to hell for my political beliefs. Because he supplies a return address, I’m not too concerned about him. Its the one’s who are anonymous that trouble me.
Even though they are troubling, its still nice to receive a handwritten envelope.
From Duane Zwinger, a classmate in Sykeston days:
The story was very accurate. Uncle Eddie was the postmaster. My view of the postal service was somewhat different as I was a “farmer”. We got our mail delivered to us by the “mailman” in our post box that was run over many times. “We lived on the highway three miles east of Sykeston). I would say that Dad had to repair the mailbox two times a year. The mail usually came to the farm about 2:00 PM. It was a mad dash to the mailbox to get the MAIL. (Most items in the mailbox were important). A comment on mail nowadays. I cannot remember the last time I got a just plain letter from someone Bo things have really changed. I hope we do find a need for the Post Offices of today.
From Charlie Rike
I have to say you had some great memories of the postal service in your thoughts today. I am blessed to live in a small [east central Minnesota] town, the postal workers are really great out in the small towns. I am only home here about 1/2 the time so I have my mail stopped a lot for a few days at a time or a few months if I go south for a while.
My lady mail carrier is so very thoughtful, she gave me her cell phone number to call her in case I forget to drop a stop mail form by the office. If I am gone for any length of time the PO here will allow me to designate someone to pickup my mail once a week, which is usually my sister & brother in-law, they pick it up, go through it & send me any first class mail I need to see. So I really do appreciate our small town postal service.
In a past life when I worked as a depot agent / telegrapher for the old Northern Pacific Ry both here in Minnesota & western Montana, I handled lots of mail bags, loading them & unloading from the mail car of the passenger trains of the day that hauled almost all of the mail. I remember how much more mail there would be to load & unload over Christmas time each year.
From Gloria Bougie, who grew up in Sykeston:
I can so remember mail and the post office in Sykeston, my dad”s dental office was right next door. The post masters at that time were Martin Kremer and his sister, Lena. It was always an occasion to “go get the mail”. You are right, the boxes had glass fronts and combination locks. In Sykeston, I think mail time is still a time of gathering and visiting which isn’t all bad. Nice to read your blog and nice to hear from others. I think the junk mail of today is obscene, who needs all of that, I don’t write letters anymore because my sister, Sister Jean, and I call on the phone.
Thanks again for the article, I enjoyed it.
(later) I also remember that when the mail came, every one gathered in the post office waiting for [postmaster] Martin to get it sorted. While he was doing that all the windows for buying stamps et cetera were closed.

#428 – Dick Bernard: A Mutiny aboard the Ship of State

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I hear all sorts of opinions in the course of an average day, from all sorts of people. Part of this is due to being retired, and thus having more varied opportunities. A larger part is a desire to hear, and engage with, more points of view than one gets as a ‘bird of a feather’ in some special interest constituency or other.
While I’m a hopeful optimistic kind of guy, things look hopeless in this country into which I was born, have lived my entire life, and will likely die. It seems that we’re all involved in a collective mutiny on the ship of state; we want what we want; and we’re rapidly killing ourselves in the process.
Just in the last few hours we were at a political fund raiser for a Congressional candidate, a Minnesota Democrat, and a small group of us were in quite a passionate discussion of what will happen in 2012, and why. Before leaving for that fundraiser, came an e-mail from a good friend on the political left, who said about the President: “I think his brand of politics doesn’t inspire confidence. I’m not confident in him. In fact I’m leery and distrust him, but will vote for him because a Republican would be worse.” What he was saying is that President Obama isn’t progressive enough and ‘don’t expect much help from me to help reelect him’. And this friend is moderate as left-wingers go.
I ask folks like my friend, “so, what is the viable alternative?” There is never an answer to this question. The hard word is “viable”.
The strategists for the polar right, the opposite of the progressive left, and the Republican strategists in particular, understand the left-wing animus towards Obama, and expertly manipulate it.
The issue is winning, after all, not our country surviving: “Divide and conquer.”
Early this morning came a New York Times column about a moderate Congressman, long in Congress. It’s excellent and a tiny piece of hope. If you’re not into reading columns, at least consider reading the last three or four paragraphs of this one which convey a little hope. The rest of the column reminded me of our own visit to the U.S. House of Representative gallery Halloween night in 2000.
Politically, we are a very odd and self-destructive bunch as we enter into the political warfare of the next 14 months.
Many of us despise our system. Can it get much worse? It will get worse, unless we collectively get a grip.
It is not unusual to despise a leader, especially one who has to lead warring factions who despise each other.
For 30 years I’ve done family history, and among many others, I’ve recorded the stories about what some influential family members – all of them common folk – thought about Franklin Delano Roosevelt. At the same time FDR was about the business of saving the country from itself, he was loathed by some of the very people he was helping save, often for emotional and not rational reasons. And my family was likely very typical back in the hard times of the 1930s.
What was the viable alternative then? I submit that the FDR haters wouldn’t have liked the alternative, and our country would not have survived to be what it is today had their loathing become reality….
What is the viable alternative now? If by some awful chance the mutiny succeeds, and we throw the bums out and start over, there will be no captain of the ship, and we passengers on this mutinous craft, along with the misfits who pulled off the mutiny, will collectively sink.
Do we want this? I hope not.

#427 – Dick Bernard: I breathe union

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Labor Day, I was caught in the magnetic pull of the Minnesota State Fair. It was the last day of the great Minnesota get-together, and I went on a whim. It was my second visit in the Fair’s 12-day run. I have rarely if ever missed a Fair in 46 years in Minnesota.
I’m one of those creatures of habit at the Fair. The Education Building is most always the first stop. And the first stop there is the Education Minnesota – state teachers union – location, which has been at the same prominent place for many years. (Until 1998, it was called “MEA” – the Minnesota Education Association booth.) The two state teacher unions merged in 1998, now also part of AFL-CIO, and so it goes.
I worked for NEA affiliate MEA/Education Minnesota for 27 years, and I know the history very well. The state fair booth is very popular – a must stop for many – because of the free calendars it gives away. Labor Day I happened by the location when the line was not too long, and got my picture taken (here it is, this year: EdMinnCalendar2011002.)
There was a time in the early 1980s when MEA was considering giving up the space because it was expensive and of uncertain value. When the free calendar idea was first tried in the late 1990s, that too was a risky financial proposition. But both traditions continue.
Today, I would venture a guess that nobody at Education Minnesota considers dropping either. The space is a positive magnet for thousands of visitors.
These days, of course, “union” is used as an epithet by those who feel labor should not organize.
I spent well over 30 years active in the organized public school teacher movement. Most of that time my employer was called “Association”; at the end of my career, it was called “Union” (there is no operative distinction between the two words, nor in what we did and do, which was to represent the interests of hard-working people who cared deeply about their profession, their occupation.)
What pains me most, now, is that some of the anti-Union, anti-Obama hate mail that comes my way through those disgusting ‘forwards’ comes from people who have directly benefited by the efforts of Unions over the years, including my own. To borrow the words of Diercks Bentley’s popular country-western song: “what are they thinkin’?”

The tycoons who are bankrolling the bust government, bust the union gig have to be laughing up a storm. Best that we learn exactly who the enemy really is, and it is NOT the unions.
A shadowy segment of the fat cats is the bunch committed to use the middle class to destroy the Middle Class.
No, I can’t prove that, though the above referenced link is pretty strong evidence of who is bankrolling what these days.
During the recent extremely expensive Wisconsin Recall election across the river from me, one of the most common ads against the Democrat challenger Shelly Moore was her fire-breathing comment “We breathe union“. She was made to appear as a thug when in reality she was a laid off teacher and local teacher union leader. Of course, her comment was only part of what she actually said (Scroll to the last paragraph of the article. The videos are no longer on line.) The anti-Moore ad was not a locally produced Mom and Pop anti-union ad.
So, did Moore say what she was quoted as saying? Yes. Was her quote fairly used? No. It was intended to mislead and to incite anger against Unions.
I applaud Shelly Moore for her comment.
And, yes, I breathe union, and have breathed union since I first became actively involved about 1968.
And we in the body politic had best pay very close attention to who we are listening to and who we are supporting in coming days and months towards election 2012.

#426 – Dick Bernard: Labor Day 2011 and "The Help"

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We went to the film, The Help, Sunday afternoon. It was time very well spent.
There are many reviews: Go to IMDB for many of them and other information about The Help. If you haven’t seen the film, consider taking it in, either in the theater, or by other means.
The Help is about Jackson, Mississippi, in 1963, and about relationships, such as they were between Negro domestics and the families they worked for.
Sitting behind us in the Grandview Theater in St. Paul were two women who commented back and forth from time to time.
During the film, one of them said to the other, “that’s the way it was“. She apparently was from 1963 Mississippi, or perhaps even Jackson, the setting for the film. They sat there through the film credits at the end so I saw them as we exited: two older white women, my age.
1963 was a watershed year in the Civil Rights movement, captured best by Martin Luther King Jr in his book “Why We Can’t Wait“, published in early 1964, after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. This book is an excellent companion for the movie. It is a book I go back to frequently.

Our guest for the movie was Cathy’s long-time friend, “Annette”, who I wrote about in December, 2009.
Back then, 21 months ago, she’d just been fired from her job in a bank for what turned out to be no reason other than the new manager wanted somebody else.
There was no need for a justifiable reason, as those domestics so well knew in 1963.
Annette is Black, single, in her 50s, probably 30-years or more an American citizen, raised in one of those tiny Caribbean resort islands.
Her family was not a family of domestics, but nonetheless knew their place and their roles back home. She is a neat person.
She said she enjoyed the movie, but she was uncharacteristically quiet.
I didn’t know till afterward that she’s unemployed again.
After over a year of unemployment which included knee replacement surgery, she finally found a job at the Twin Cities International Airport. It was a long bus ride, then eight hours on her feet in one of those food concessions in a concourse. It was scarcely above minimum wage. She had hoped to make 12 weeks, but she finally quit the job after only 10 weeks, last Friday. Her legs just couldn’t tolerate the punishment of standing all day.
So, she spends Labor Day joining the ranks of the unemployed again.
Annette won’t be out on any picket lines today or ever. It’s not her nature, and besides she can’t physically do it. She may end up going back to the island where she at least has family, she said.
“Good riddance”, some might say.
Meanwhile, our country lurches into a permanent election season, candidates braying about this or that as they seek office in 2012.
Ours, like increasing numbers of American families, has long-term unemployed among our own members.
Unless there is serious action, there will doubtless be more as the months go on.
Finally, in “The Help”, the domestic workers get mad as hell, unite, and their cultured and genteel overseers get their due.
But The Help is only a movie about a novel.
Rather than expecting today’s unemployed to advocate for themselves, or go out and get a job that doesn’t exist, we need to do the heavy lifting, politically.
In the long run, those without means will exact their revenge: our economy will get weaker and weaker because there is less and less money to spend. None of us will escape.
We don’t need this to happen. It’s in our court.
END NOTE: The film caused me to seek out an old Reader’s Digest article I knew I had saved, written by Mary Hatwood Futrell, daughter of a “domestic”, and then President of the over 2 million member National Education Association. The article is here: FutrellRdrsDigJul1989001
POSTNOTES:
If nothing else, this film should encourage reflection and discussion.
1. My personal knowledge of “Negroes” did not begin until Army days in 1962-63. I grew up in North Dakota before the military bases, and the race-of-choice was “Indians” who were restricted to Reservations and hardly respected. By chance, at the time of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech in Washington D.C., I was in an Army division on maneuvers in rural South Carolina. It was there, for the first time, that I saw first hand the separate and unequal division of the races in the south. It was an eye-opening experience to say the very least.
2. The film has also caused me to reflect on growing up in a public school teachers family in the rural midwest in 1940s and 1950s. Succinctly, in those ‘good old days’, teachers were treated with scarce more public respect than the domestics in the film. The significant difference, of course, was that racial animus wasn’t part of the equation. Public School teachers, before collective bargaining, were Public Servants (caps intended) – officially and publicly respected, but dismissed at will. Their travails were very small compared with the plight of the Indians and Negroes, but they were travails nonetheless.