February 2013 – Thoughts Towards a Better World

#696 – Dick Bernard: Pope's remembered

February 28, 2013/0 Comments/in Community, Family History, History /by dickbernard

Today, Pope Benedict XVI officially resigns, the first Pope to do so in hundreds of years. It was a wise decision, and hopefully a good precedent to be followed in future years. The official (church approved) story of Benedict XVI was this handout, which was available at Basilica of St. Mary last Sunday: Pope Benedict XVI001
I won’t make any predictions about Benedict XVI’s successor. I understand that all of the electors – the current College of Cardinals – were appointed either by Pope John Paul II or Benedict XVI, so anyone wishing for dramatic change, even minor change, will probably be disappointed.
John Paul II‘s Poland was overrun by both Germany and Russia, and his boyhood home, Wadowice, which we drove past in early May 2000, was less than an hour from Oswiecim (Auschwitz-Birkenau), so his political imprinting was very strong; Benedict XVI came of age in Adolf Hitler’s Germany, and the Catholic Church was at its authoritarian best then and there. The emergence of a new John XXIII from amongst the current Cardinals is not very likely. Indeed, John XXIII surprised the world after his election in 1958.
One thing is sure: the Chair of Peter, the fisherman who was the first Pope, could not have imagined the world of 2013. I’ve been at the supposed spot on the Sea of Galilee where the mantle was passed to him. Then was a simple time. Even today, looking out over the large lake-size “Sea”, you can imagine what it might have been like, then, over 2000 years ago.
Now, we’re about seven billion humans; one billion of those who are called “Catholic” by some criteria or other, probably 10% of those Catholics, at best, much care what the Pope decrees. The Papacy is a complex institution, at best. But it still has a very big microphone, and proclaims to speak with authority.
I’m lifelong Catholic, active. Even at age 72, the succession of Popes I’ve experienced is a short list:
Pius XII (1939-58) was Pope during the entirety of my growing up years. It was his face that was on the wall of the Catholic Churches and Schools I attended.
John XXIII (1958-63) was Pope during my college years. Vatican II was on his watch, beginning officially after I completed college (1961). But even in college times, the ecumenical breezes were blowing. I noticed recently in the 1961 College Annual at Valley City State Teachers College, that I was one of ten on the Inter-Religious Council. A few years earlier, such rapprochement would have been unacceptable, regardless of denomination. Catholics, Methodists, Lutherans…all in the same room? Astonishing!
Paul VI (1963-78) doesn’t excite any particular memories, though it was in his time that birth control was rendered sinful, even though his advisors advised that there were no theological problems with birth control. We’re still struggling with that teaching. Basically, Catholics have ignored it ever since. I recall watching portions of his funeral while at my brother’s home in Salt Lake City in August, 1978.
John Paul I (1978) died after only one month as Pope. The circumstances of his death remain controversial.
John Paul II, the Polish Pope, (1978-2005), had a long reign.
One time in my life, October 14, 1998, I saw John Paul II in person, in the Popemobile, at the Vatican in Rome. (Facebook album of seven photos here.) I can attest that even if in an ideal position, as I was, long before the Pope appeared, attempting to take a photograph of the Pontiff, even a poor one, is not an exercise in sacredness. You either photo, or pray, not both. The best potential photo was this one:
(click to enlarge)

John Paul II October 14, 1998, Vatican, Rome

In the Facebook album there is a second photo where you can actually see the Pope, but I don’t think the Pope would have selected it as one of his favorites.
Benedict XVI (2005-13) now ends his time in the Papacy.
I wish him well.
Those of us who are Catholics – really we are the “Church” not the Pope or the Vatican – will carry on, regardless of who the White Smoke announces, shortly.

#695 – Dick Bernard: Mike, VCSTC's Mr. Moore and a lesson in Civics and Freedom of Speech; and the problem of "Judging a book by its cover".

February 26, 2013/0 Comments/in Community, Education, Family History, History, North Dakota, War /by dickbernard

I met Mike when he was about 14 years old. He was my new girlfriend, Barbara’s, brother, 4 years younger than she. I don’t remember much about him then. Their younger brother, David, then 4 or so, more sticks in my mind. He was a really nice little kid.
This would have been about 1961, in Valley City, at their little house just south of Mercy Hospital.
Forty-six years later I was with Mike when he had his last meal at the hospital in Fargo. A few hours later he died, last survivor from his immediate family. I was his brother-in-law and had become the “go-to” guy and friend. At that last meeting I was able to show him what I still feel was the death certificate for his Dad, and where his Dad was buried. It seemed a very important deal for Mike. He knew nothing about his father, who’d left when he was two years old and there had been no contact at all after his parents divorced.
(click on photos to enlarge)

Mike, May 2007. His last few years he was paraplegic as an effect of aneurysm surgery – a high risk of the needed procedure.

In my memory, Mike always seemed “odd man out” in the family. In his last months, I made it my mission to try to find out, at least, who his Dad was. (The likely father died when Mike was about 9, turned out, and had been living about 150 miles from Valley City.)
From early on, Mike’d been on his own, so to speak. He probably reminded his Mom of his Dad; and his sister and brother were easier to be with. Mike could be mean.
Mike lived most of his final years a block from the walking bridge near the college in Valley City. Up the block was a funeral home; across the street was the Sheyenne River. Till she died in 1999, his Mom lived with him in the little house.
Mike would have been noticed in town, not necessarily in a positive way. He was a loner, sometimes odd looking, nocturnal. He seldom shopped, but seemed to tend to buy doubles of things: two pairs of the same kind of shoes, two identical coffee makers; two bottles of Coke…. He’d been mentally ill for many years, but was one of those who if they take their meds can get along. I gather he went through his own drug phase, sometime.
We all know people like Mike. People whose unattractive “cover” masks a “book” within. Often I see a woman pacing a small indoor mall near here. She is in her own world, seemingly oblivious to her surroundings, pacing quickly, talking loudly to herself. Recently, I asked a friend who works there about the woman. “She drives her car here”, she said, shaking her head. The lady probably takes her meds and is no danger to anyone, including people on the road.
For Mike, inside his “book” was great intelligence, and a refusal to give up.
He graduated from Valley City High School in 1965. When the few of us buried him in 2007, one of his high school teachers, Annie Haugaard, legendary Valley City teacher, said that Mike had been a good boy, a good student. She felt it important to say that about Mike. She knew a bit about him, inside that cover….
To my knowledge, no one attended his high school graduation as his sister, my wife, had just been admitted to University Hospital in Minneapolis with what turned out to be a terminal illness. All attention was on her, deservedly so. If someone went to the graduation to honor him, I haven’t heard about it.
Mike went on, and got his teaching degree at Valley City State Teachers College. Sometime in 1966-67 he had Mr. Kenneth Moore as a history teacher.
After graduation, he got a teaching job in ND, quite a distance from Valley City, in a school large enough to have 17 seniors. He taught there 1 1/2 years until he was fired. Thence he was drafted into the Army, where he served for two years, was given a secret clearance (which he honored, believe me), and was discharged as a Specialist 5th Class – a high ranking for a two year enlisted man. He had wanted to be a career man, but someone(s) in the little town where he had taught sabotaged his chances to continue in the military. The general allegation was lack of patriotism.

Mike (at left) 1972

*
I know all this, because when I was cleaning out his house, which he’d lost when he stopped making payments, I found among his meager belongings five copies of a 22 page statement from a military interrogatory at his base in Germany, dated 23 March 1972. The copies were almost unreadable (a one page sample is here:Mike transcript 3:1972001 ) For some reason, that interrogatory was important to him; as was his Army uniform, which I found crumpled in a dresser drawer. The uniform now resides in the Archives at the North Dakota History Center in Bismarck, with Sp5 affixed to the shoulder.
I’ve read through the interrogatory several times, and given the questions asked, and the persons cited by name, Mike ran afoul of someone(s) in his employing school district, basically for the sin of allowing kids to talk about their opposition to the Vietnam War, then raging. He was assigned to advise the school paper, and apparently kids wrote about maybe going to Canada to escape the draft, etc., and he wouldn’t censor them. Some of the complainants are named in the interrogatory. Into the mix came the name of Kenneth Moore of VCSTC whose teaching methods were, according to Mike, “to get people to think”. “It was through him that I probably got some of my teaching ideas specifically talking about current events, rather than by just lecturing….” (interrogatory)
The interrogatory goes on and on.
An allegation is made about how Mike himself may have threatened to go to Canada to escape the draft. In response to a question he says “When I first came in [the Army] I didn’t want to be in…But to tell you the truth, since I’ve gotten out of basic training I have nothing really of consequence against the Army. As a matter of fact, of all people, I even talked to the Sergeant Major a few days ago about going to Airborne School….” He had never even thought about resisting the draft or going to Canada; but he hadn’t prevented kids from expressing themselves, however.
The charges, however groundless, apparently created a quandary for the military, which gave him a security clearance and promoted him to a high enlisted rank given his short term of service. Sometime around or after the Munich Olympic Games (August-September, 1972) he separated from the service with an honorable discharge after two years of service.
He never talked about the military again, to my recollection. And until I found that uniform crumpled in a dresser drawer, I didn’t know he had any artifacts of that time in history.
I have tried to find out whatever happened to his VCSTC teacher Kenneth Moore, with no success: it’s too common a name and from long ago. Apparently, Mr. Moore was only at VCSTC that single year, 1966-67, a year when the Vietnam War was truly raging. It was not unusual for young instructors to have short tenures at VCSTC: they were continuing their education. But I’m pretty sure that Mr. Moore’s teaching was noticed, and perhaps not positively, in those tense days when free speech wasn’t particularly free.
When I think of judging people these days, I tend to think back to my brother-in-law Mike, who in our brief visits taught me more than he ever learned from me. I salute him.
You’ll find him lying at rest with his mother and brother at Valley City’s Woodbine Cemetery. His sister, Barbara, is up the hill at St. Catherine’s cemetery.
Postnote: Some years before he died, he left brief instructions with the funeral home which handled his arrangements: “As far as any funeral service, that would be nice. However, I doubt if I would have more than two or three people attending. I guess I am kind of a lone wolf.”
In the end, at graveside, there were 6 of us. And later at the assisted living facility in which he lived his last few months (the 2007 photo above was taken there), perhaps 40 or 50 residents gathered for a very nice memorial service.
He may have been a “lone wolf”, but he was not alone. If looking in on his goings-away, he was probably surprised, and you might have even seen a little smile.

Photo by Mike at 1972 Olympic Games, Munich

Olympic Flame at 1972 Munich Olympics, photo by Mike.

Exercise Tip Sheet from Mike during a period of hospitalization in the late 1970s (Note to self: use it!): Mike exercise tip sheet002

#694 – Dick Bernard: Guns, yet again.

February 23, 2013/0 Comments/in Community, Guns, Minnesota, Politics /by dickbernard

Recently, it seems, I’m fixated on Guns. Mebbe so. It is an important topic. (Additional recent posts at Feb. 3 and Feb. 19, 2013)
I’m an active blogger; this is #694 since March, 2009.
Put the letters “Guns” in the search box, and up pop 27 blogposts which apparently use the letters “guns” somewhere within their text. I’m not inclined to argue with word search, but, of the references it gives, a half dozen of those posts were not about guns at all (#104, 465, 473, 533, 588, 598); three are by guest writers; seven are post the Newtown CT massacre. There are headings like Binghamton NY, Tucson AZ (Gabby Giffords), Aurora CO, Newtown CT, earlier sites of gun carnage by an individual (there are others I would have written about too).
The reader can decide if I’m fixated on the topic of Guns, or someone with a very rational concern….
February 21, I did make an appearance at the street theatre which was the Gun Hearings at the Minnesota State Senate, in the Hearing Room under the Capitol Rotunda. I wrote and have photos of the event here (scroll to the lower half of that post).
The February 22, Minneapolis Star Tribune, headlined “Groups battle over gun checks” on page B1 (you can read it here). (I notice, in the on-line version of the story, that they used a photo of the same guy I caught a little earlier in line – holstered pistol on right hip….)
Today’s editorial in the STrib was about the Gun issue.
Guns are hot. Deservedly so.
Of course, news in our society is predictable: “if it bleeds, it leads” seems still the mantra. So does conflict, as in “Groups battle over gun checks” (the STrib headline).
I was at the Thursday “battle”, and as best I could determine the only war was over who had the most buttons, and the gun side did win, it appeared. Maybe that’s why the guy is smiling in the photo, sporting his “Self Defense is a Human Right“:
(click to enlarge)

His button seemed more common than the more pleasant appearing opponents: “Minnesotans Against Being Shot”:

But my musing on this topic went in a differing direction when I saw the Star Tribune report on the hearing I had just attended.
In Minnesota, it is legal to carry a firearm into the Minnesota State Capitol: “When the legislative session opened in January, there were 523 [licensed permit-holders with right to carry weapons into the capitol]…”As of [February 21] that number had spiked to 723…By comparison, in 2012 there were only 56 new gun-carrying notifications during the entire year.”
(Star Tribune Feb 22)
There were lots of orderly people in those throngs waiting to get into the hearing on Thursday.
How many of them in the line were packing heat, like the now famous guy in the two photographs, mine and the STrib (see below)? (He seems to have been uniquely public about his right to bear arms.)

In line. Note the holstered handgun

What if all those 723 authorized to be armed and dangerous were in that line on Thursday, and their collective feelings of needing to defend themselves led to a group need to enforce their right to bear arms, and they did so?
What would happen?
Of course, nobody knows, but whether an organized armed insurrection to take over the State Capitol, or a Keystone Cops caper, the results would not have been pretty…and predictable.
“Self defense” works better in theory than it likely would in fact.
Gun sanity needs to replace the current rush to insanity.
Just my opinion.

#693 – Dick Bernard: Dan Moriarty, Substitute Teacher, and teacher in so many ways who "ate his Spinach"

February 22, 2013/0 Comments/in Community, Education, Family History, Minnesota, Peace & Justice, Quietings /by dickbernard

UPDATE 7:00 p.m. February 22: Dan’s funeral was very fitting of his rich life. Here is the program for the funeral, on page four you’ll find Dan’s biography: Dan Moriarty Program 001. Here is a Facebook album of some photos taken at the Funeral today.
This morning I plan to attend the celebration of the life of Dan Moriarty at his funeral at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church in St. Paul Park MN. Judging from the tributes in his published obituary, Dan’s life is one to celebrate. (I’ve just reread those tributes. They’re very worthy your time, particularly if you’re feeling down, today, for any reason.)
I first met Dan when I joined the staff of Minnesota Education Association (MEA) in 1972. Doing the math, he was then about 48 years old.
Next Tuesday, my oldest son is 49. How time does fly.
Back in 1972, Dan was a seasoned MEA staff person – one of the very few – and I was the greenest of greenhorns, 16 years his junior. When he died I was still 16 years his junior…the age gap doesn’t change…until one dies. Age is all relative. We’re all on a trip, with the same ultimate destination. Hopefully, we make the best of the journey and, as I once heard a minister eulogize another teacher who had died much too young, in a car accident enroute to Boys Nation: that we “live before we die, and die before we are finished….”

Dan surely did “live before he died”.
I’m now long retired from MEA, and what remains from my long career with MEA is a single box in our garage.
After learning of Dan’s death, I took down that box to see if there was anything that might mention Dan’s name, and much to my surprise I came across a 10 page publication of his, published in 1993, after he’d gotten involved in substitute teaching in several east metropolitan area school districts. Below is a photo of the cover of the booklet. Here is the booklet in its entirety: Dan Moriarty “Subbing”002. Many who knew Dan, including the former recipients of his “Grandpa stories”, will doubtless recognize Dan in his advice to other aspiring substitute (and, indeed, regular) teachers. At the top of page 5: “Grandma’s Law: If you don’t eat your spinach, you don’t get your dessert.” (Somewhere I have a copy of his Grandpa Stories too, though for the moment it remains in hiding.)
(click to enlarge)

Many of the tributes to Dan, readable in his obituary, came from students who knew him only as an occasional “substitute teacher” in South Washington County, S. St. Paul, Hastings or Inver Grove Heights.
Obviously, he was the very essence of teacher, in the most positive sense of the word. A son of Enderlin, ND, he made a difference.
We who were colleagues of his on the staff of the state teacher’s union also have many fond feelings about him, still retained many years after he left MEA staff ca mid-1980s. Here are 17 former colleagues, speaking about Dan: Dan Moriarty
I can’t say I knew Dan really well. On the other hand, I knew him plenty well enough to know that he was comfortable in his own skin, and he set out to be a contributor to whatever part of society he happened to be part of. This ranged from WWII service as a Marine, to working for his Church, to advocating for teachers, to teaching, to family history, his family, and on, and on, and on.
Every one of us, in one way or another, have made, and are making, our own contributions to the world in which we live. If we’re lucky, in somebody’s cardboard box, somewhere, lies a positive memory or two of us, probably one we think was no big deal.
Maybe our emotional mood right now is such that we don’t think we made a difference.
Trust me, everyone has, and will….
Dan would probably be surprised at the attention he’s gotten these last few days, and shrug all the compliments off.
But I think he’d smile, too.
He was just out to do his best.
And he did.
The world is a better place because he was with us.
Farewell, Dan.
And to the rest of us: if there’s someone out there who made a difference in your life, and is still living, now is a good time to say, as Dan would, a gentle “thank you”.
Related: The Bottom Line of Teaching, here.

Leila Whitinger: Remembering Valley City (ND) State Teachers College

February 21, 2013/0 Comments/in Education, Family History, North Dakota /by dickbernard

Leila’s reminiscences are a part of a series of recollections about the place we called “STC” back in the late 1950s to early 1960s. The originating post is found here, at January 2, 2013.
(click on photos to enlarge)

STC Band Officers 1960-61, Leila 2nd from right

Memories of Valley City State Teachers College
By Leila Whitinger, B.S. 1963
I attended VCSTC from the fall of 1959 until graduation in spring, 1963. By the time I finished, I completed majors in both Biology and physical education and a minor in German. Nearly all of the electives I completed were in music, and I was a member of the band for my first three years. I also sang in the choir. For fun, I took voice and piano lessons throughout my years in school. Because of the diversity of my classes, I had a lot of opportunities to become acquainted with students having many different interests.
Unlike most of my classmates, I was not from North Dakota. I was born and raised in Michigan, where my nuclear family still lived. I was in a unique situation, in that I moved into a totally new environment and nine hundred miles away from home to attend college at Valley City. Others repeatedly asked me why I chose to attend school there, and I had a ready answer for them. I told them that my grandmother was in the very first class at Valley City, my mother got her standard certificate there, and two of my aunts were also students there. I was just keeping up the family tradition.
My mother’s family homesteaded near Milnor, ND, while North Dakota was still a territory. My father’s family didn’t move to the Forman area until 1914, but they had a deep history in the area. Nora Mohberg, my mother’s sister, had just completed her Bachelor’s degree at Valley City when I graduated from high school. She was deeply involved in writing area historical articles and books, so I grew up reading about the challenges of pioneer life on the prairie. My grandmother still lived in Milnor not too far from Aunt Nora’s farm. One of Nora’s sons, Robert Mohberg, was a senior at Valley City during my freshman year.
To me, I didn’t feel as though I had left home. It felt more as though I was returning home. My parents and most of their brothers and sisters left North Dakota during the depression and dust bowl after losing their family farms. While Mother frequently reminisced with warm memories of her days at Valley City, she rarely had much good to say about their life on the farm. Because Mother’s mother was still living in Milnor, she and my father made annual trips to visit her. It wasn’t until my high school years that any of my five siblings or I could go with them, since they generally traveled with Mother’s sisters who also lived in our Michigan hometown.
When we were finally able to accompany our parents, we had a chance to meet mother’s “dozens of cousins” and get acquainted with our grandmother. I knew that I wouldn’t feel like a outsider, since I was related through my mother’s family to a whole lot of Andersons, Ankerfelts, Ericksons, Fladeboes, Toftleys and Johnsons. Her father was one of fifteen children, and most of them remained either in southeastern North Dakota or southwestern Minnesota. We visited many of them during our visits throughout the years, so I already knew what North Dakota women mean by, “A little lunch.”
Aunt Nora took us to Valley City during the summer between my junior and senior high school years. I fell in love with the place the minute I saw it, and I think that I may have even gotten an application on that same day. Mother was horrified at the idea of my moving so far from home, but it helped that my home would be with her sister and that Robert would be a student there. It definitely wasn’t an easy sell, except for the fact that it was so much less expensive than Michigan colleges.

Blowing Bubble Gum – Leila at right – one of her favorite pics in the 1960 annual.

I had been planning to go to college from the time I was a very small child. I visualized a college as a small cottage in the woods, and it sounded great to me! By the time I got older, I could see that it would take a miracle for me to go to college because we had no money. Our father was critically injured when I was eleven years old and out of work for over a year. Because of his injuries, he was unable to provide much for the family. I started working and saving for college at that time.
I baby-sat, worked for the school recreation and hot lunch programs, and taught dancing at my sister’s dance school. I saved every nickel I earned during that time. I baby-sat for our senior class advisor on prom night because I didn’t want to waste money on a dress I didn’t need and would never use again. Outside of band and Spanish club, I didn’t participate in any extra-curricular activities. By the time I moved to North Dakota before my freshman year, I was exhausted. My cousins wondered about me, since I slept for almost the entire six weeks I spent with them on the farm before the term started. The hypnotic wheat fields, bright blue skies and quiet farm life agreed with me, and I relaxed for the first time in a very long time.
Aunt Nora took me to Valley City before the beginning of the school year to help me set up my dance school. Charlotte Graichen was very helpful to us, and I was able to start teaching during the second week of classes. I lived in the dorm, of course, and I loved it. I was in a suite with five other girls, and we became good friends very quickly. Perhaps it was because I grew up in a small one-bathroom house with four sisters and a brother, but it didn’t feel crowded to me.

Leila dancing at EBC Hit Parade 1960

One of the benefits of living in the dorm was that my suite mates always brought “care packages” to me from their mothers. I learned about wonderful pfeffenusse cookies, krumkake, apfelkuchen and a myriad of other Swedish, Norwegian and German treats. On weekends, I was usually one of the few girls left in the dorm. Our housemother was a sweetheart to me. Mrs. Hedberg, AKA Hettie or Grendel, was also from Michigan. After my first week in the dorm, I requested a board to be placed under my mattress for support. I injured my back in a diving accident when I was fifteen, and was having problems with the mattress. In only a few days, she had a new firm mattress delivered to my room! I used it for the entire three years I lived there. When her sister sent Michigan cherries to her, she always invited me in to share them with her.
Marion Rieth mentioned something about wearing high heels to class. When I saw students going to class in high heels, I almost flipped. I remember asking myself, “Are they insane?” I started out wearing dress shoes, but quickly changed to tennis shoes. They had equally insane rules about wearing slacks, but nothing was written about shoes. By the end of the first term, most of the other girls from the dorm were also wearing tennis shoes.
The slacks issue was particularly galling to me, since it really was an outrageous rule. We weren’t allowed to wear slacks in any of the classroom buildings, cafeteria or library. I have no idea how many times I was kicked out of the library for breaking that rule, since I would often stop there after teaching my dance classes. It meant that I would have to go back to my dorm room, change clothes, and return to study. I quickly learned that logical arguments about subzero weather didn’t work, but it did motivate me to work towards getting rid of that rule. I also learned that I didn’t run into that kind of nonsense when I went to work in the biology labs in the evening. It took a couple of years for us to get rid of that rule.
I thoroughly enjoyed my experiences in band. Fred Koppleman was a senior during my freshman year, and he was an excellent percussionist. Before our very first practice, he showed me his award for being the national rudimentary champion of percussion instruments, along with a terrific photograph of him with his drums. As a percussionist myself, I had the distinction of being the only snare drum soloist earning a first place during the Michigan solo-ensemble festival during my senior year of high school. Art Froemke was still directing the band during my freshman year, and his eyesight was practically gone. He kept calling me Fred as we were practicing, so the rest of the band frequently called me Fred after that. I guess if someone is going to mistake me for a national champion, it isn’t so bad!
If I were to say that there were a lot of interesting people in that band, it would be an understatement. Because of my dance and choreography experience, I taught the chorus line for EBC Hit Parades, and that was a lot of fun. I learned that I would never be able to cut it as a straight man/woman to a comic after doing a sketch with Lynn Clancy. I was supposed to keep a straight face while I was asking him questions, but I couldn’t hold it together. I also learned that it is almost impossible to deliver lines when you are choking with laughter.
I especially liked Mr. Lade’s classes, since he gave me some of the best advice a science teacher would ever need. He told us not to waste our time memorizing science facts because they are constantly changing. He said that the most important skill we could develop is to learn where to find information when we needed it. He encouraged lifelong learning with that simple piece of advice.
For me, at least, my years at Valley City provided me with the experiences I missed during high school. I attended formal dances, and enjoyed them. I had time to sit around with girlfriends and be silly. My activities with my Delphi sisters are treasured memories. I became acquainted with countless terrific classmates and teachers who positively affected my experience at Valley City. All of that prepared me to teach, to advocate, and agitate throughout my career in education. I really don’t think that a large university could have done a better job.

Leila at right on trampoline in Girls Gymnasium.

#692 – "Sahn Pahl", some points of view on pronunciation of French words

February 20, 2013/0 Comments/in Community, Family History, Immigration, Minnesota, Quebec/French-Canadians /by dickbernard

A fellow Franco-American, Jerry Foley, sent around an interesting letter from a Quebec visitor which he saw in the February 11, 2013, St. Paul Pioneer Press, entitled Sahn Pahl. Several of us, all with an interest in the general topic of being of French ancestry, or speaking or familiar with the language, weighed in with their points of view.
Here’s the originating letter:
“Have you ever noticed there are a lot of French names for places in Minnesota? The state motto is “L’Etoile du Nord” for a reason. I know people think of the area as having such a strong Scandinavian history, which it does, but it seems a lot of people here, and elsewhere, don’t seem to realize that, in terms of non-Native-American European settlement, St. Paul itself, and much of the rest of Minnesota, were originally explored and settled by French and French Canadians.
This history is represented in many names around Minnesota, from St. Paul to Lake Vermilion. Take a look online sometime and see just how many names in Minnesota are French and discover what a rich French history the state has.
I recently visited St. Paul (pronounced “Sahn Pahl”) to do some genealogical history for my family. I have many relatives who lived in and around St. Paul in the 1800s and many are buried in some of the old Catholic cemeteries around the city, complete with headstones totally in French. During my interaction with locals here, I was constantly being “corrected” for my pronunciation of common French terms and names. For example: I pronounced Brainerd as “Bray-Nair” the actual pronunciation and a much prettier sounding place than “Brain Nerd.” Don’t you think?
I pronounced St. Cloud as “Sahn Cloo,” St. Croix as “Sahn Kwah,” Duluth as “Doo loot,” Hennepin as “Ahn Pahn,” Nicollet as “Nee coh Lay,” Robert Street is “Row Bear,” Mille Lacs as “Meel Lahk,” Radisson as “Rahdee sohn” and Pepin as “Pay Pahn.”
I could go on and on as Minnesota is full of French names, but I think you get the idea. All of these pronunciations are actually the correct way to pronounce these words. So, hey, give it a try, Minnesota! Now I don’t even dream that people in Minnesota will start to pronounce these names correctly all the time, but I propose that on one day a year, everyone at least tries to. So, from here on out, I proclaim Feb. 20 pronounce-it-correctly-in-French day in Minnesota.”
Miah Saint-Georges, Saint-Aime, Quebec, Canada
Like most of we French-Canadians, Jerry sports mixed ancestry: Irish and French-Canadian (for me, it’s French-Canadian and German). For you?
But because we live in a country that has truly been a melting pot for most of its history, the pronunciation dilemma, among many others, makes it difficult to maintain some kind of true ethnic identity.
The letter was shared among the members of the steering committee which helped bring the fruition Franco-Fete in Minneapolis September 28-30, 2012. Several persons commented.
Reader. What is your opinion?
(click to enlarge)

Dr. Virgil Benoit speaks at rededication of graves of Pierre and Martha (Gervais) Bottineau at Red Lake Falls MN August 24, 2000

Dr. Virgil Benoit Prof. of French at the University of North Dakota and IFMidwest: Like the author of the article regarding pronunciation of place names, many persons are surprised that with all the names that reflect historical presence so little of that history seems living. The author would have to spend a little more time studying the complexity of the matter, and it would be good if his interest were met with a growing interest among those interested in the heritage of French and French Canadians in the Middle West. Pretty hard to be taken very seriously when so quickly passing by.

Graves of Pierre and Martha (Gervais) Bottineau, Red Lake Falls MN August 24, 2000

And here is Mary Ellen Weller, from the foreign state of Wisconsin!
Tous et toutes (one and all)
Let me just add another perspective from the standpoint of the historical power of naming. After all, the native peoples had names for most of these places before any Europeans came.
Then, there is the evidence of power shifts among these Europeans in the many place names that were simply translated from French to English as the British took over. Rainy Lake (Lac de la pluie) is a good example.
As a French teacher, I’m all for good pronunciation but I delight in the survival of so many French place names and value that far more than proper pronunciation.
Jon Tremblay, of St. Paul, who has a web presence at ToutCanadien.com*: Those who know me may be shocked by my reaction to this story. I’m satisfied with the status quo, that is, the local pronunciation.
“Proper pronunciation” is going to differ from one Francophone to another, be it Canadian or French. There is no one proper pronunciation, contrary to what some may foolishly and arrogantly believe.
The local Anglicized pronunciation makes it ours. You can tell if someone is a native Minnesotan by how they pronounce the name of a town, river, lake, county… Mispronunciation of the original language is also not something unique to French. We say “New PrAYgue” and not “New PrAHgue” for New Prague. We say “Shisago” and not “Tchisago” for Chisago. We say, “A-no-ka” and not “A-no-KA, which would give you away as an outsider right away. Lake “L’Homme-Dieu” is slaughtered beyond all recognition in French to the point of making a Francophone burst out laughing, but it’s OUR pronunciation.
I think the important thing in all of this is to remember where the names originate and give credit where credit is do. You’re not going to change the way people pronounce these names, but you could cause them to have a deeper appreciation of where they come from, which would include knowing the pronunciation in the language of origin.
* – And speaking of the web site, something I have not mentioned to anyone to date is hopefully on 4/1/2013 I will have the first of 4 books available for purchase (cheap). This will be a “Jump-Start Guide” or a “Crossing-over Guide” for those who learned France French and now want to understand Canadian French. Based on the number of requests I’ve had to provide this, I think it will be very popular and a good seller.

Old Cemetery rural Dayton MN Sep 2012 cemetery is maintained, but assorted gravestones no longer are above graves. This was a French-Canadian area.

Here’s filmmaker Christine Loys, responding from France:

Definitely interesting, not only the article, not only the fact itself… but people’s reactions to it….
I keep surprised by [some] not wishing to have a proper pronunciation… It shows a strong will of being themselves, of building an identity that is really their own identity… but to me it seems like if I decided to speak English with my own pronunciation that only the French who speak English could understand… I have been through that sort of attitude amongst French people living for many years in the UK. Some of them would never pronounce proper English and therefore would never be well understood by the English although the quality of their language was very good…
In Quebec, you’ll find an accent but that is easily understood by the French. You will always find stronger accents but even in France there are some strong accents that I can’t understand properly. It comes from old people who have never traveled out of their village or who have never met anybody else than their own family.
In Quebec, you will find many many people with the standard French accent… listen to the radio or the television and I have traveled in Quebec before and you will be surprised but it is true…. as well as in many schools… Those who make the effort, understand that it is a way of opening to the world…and it does not affect their identity… Some others would react like “I am Quebecois and that is how we are”. Fair enough for them.
The idea is that a language is for communication and if you limit it to your area… you lose too much…an accent is fine (and very nice) but not if it prevents your communication with the external world…. I think.
Of course, we are here talking about a community who has this very special definition of being American and having mostly partially French and Canadian origins…not only a community but a state…and finding an identity so many years later based only on very older origins is a challenge that I can try to understand.

Minnesota-Dakota War Veteran Tombstone at old Cemetery rural Dayton MN Sep 2012

Pierre Girard. In my opinion, except for Polish and French, most foreign names and words are pronounced phonetically. One has to have some knowledge of French to know which letters are pronounced and which are silent. Then the rest of the pronunciation is regional and who knows who set the rules for local dialect. Take the capitol of South Dakota for instance. I think all English speaking people would know how to pronounce Pierre correctly, and not as Pier. Most folks pronounce Louisville, KY correctly but then say St Louis, MO instead of “San Lewee”. Then there is Beatrice, NE. It is really pronounced “Be-AA-trice” for some strange reason. Part of the reason that many French words are pronounced incorrectly has a lot to do with the majority of “Americans” speaking only one language and that we are not the most educated nation on the planet.
These are thoughts and not excuses.
In Chippewa Falls the French name Clottier was pronounced Kloocky by the old French people as well as the pie tourtiere was pronounced “tooquere” by my dad’s French relatives. I heard folks at Our Lady of Lourdes pronounce it the same back in the old days when Les Canadienne Errants sang there.
Last (and least) from Dick Bernard: My Dad was 100% French-Canadian, so I’m 50% deeply rooted in things French. But I knew nothing about my ethnic heritage until I was over 40 years old; and did not meet my first-language French-speaking Manitoba relatives till I was over 50. Similarly, elements of the French culture also passed me by. I do not remember a single ND town in which I grew up where there was any visible French presence (including geographic names). German Catholic, Scotch Methodist, Norwegian Lutheran, Syrian Muslim, yes…but not French-Canadian.
Very recently, I came across a “Survey of N.D. Education” which I wrote for my College (Valley City State Teachers College) newspaper over 50 years ago, July 5, 1961. The second paragraph said this: “…the first school in what is now North Dakota was established at Pembina in the year 1818. It was run by the Catholic church – being used for the education of the children of the French settlers at Pembina, and it lasted for only five years. the “classroom was usually a settler’s home, and no school building was constructed in Pembina until 1876.”
At the time, I had no notion of the cultural and historical significance of that paragraph.
My favorite, accidentally discovered, French-derived Americanism is “booya”, the more or less ubiquitous summer picnic staple for churches and organization. Throw everything in the pot, and at serving time it comes out “booya”. A year or two ago I got curious about the word. Here’s what a google-search turned up.

#691 – Dick Bernard: Towards a Rational Conversation About Guns, continued

February 19, 2013/0 Comments/in Guns, Links, Politics /by dickbernard

UPDATE Feb. 24, 2012: Brief comments and photos from today at State Capitol at the end of this post.
February 3 I published a post about Guns. You can find it here, with an important update on February 11. An additional update was published on February 23, here.
Last night came an e-mail announcing hearings at the Minnesota State Capitol Room 15 February 21 and 22. Here are details.
Earlier last evening I had been at a community meeting in St. Paul’s Frogtown (the issue was simple school-community relationships, not guns). Most of us there were strangers to each other. One older man and I struck up a conversation. He had been at the earlier House hearings on Guns, and he was struck by how many angry men were in the room. He felt intimidated. But the experience made him ever more committed to make a difference on this most critical issue. (Frogtown has its own reputation relating to violence, and our meeting was multi-cultural and multi-racial. But the issues that came up were all about building better relationships generally, and not guns at all. I found that interesting.)
Guns in our society do not make for a simple rational conversation. Indeed, after the Feb 3 post, someone named Alex wrote an on-line comment suggesting I wasn’t capable of a rational conversation. I have no idea who “Alex” is – on-line comments are anonymous – so I can’t even engage in conversation with him – or her. I know nothing more than the comment.
So be it.
But I did decide after the post to try to get an idea of what people I know think about the gun issue, and I drafted a brief questionaire to try to find out. Half of the 46 people who received the questions answered the survey – a high percentage return. I bill myself as a “moderate pragmatic Democrat” so that can be a clue as to the people surveyed might be.
The results are at the aforementioned blogpost.
Before you look, I’d suggest you answer, for yourself, the same questions I asked my friends. The questions are below.
And then, get into more conversations with people you know.
We don’t need gun policy to be made by angry men sitting in a hearing room. But that is how it will be if we do not get into action.
The survey questions:
1. Do you (and/or someone else in your own home or dwelling) own a firearm(s) (“guns”)? Yes or No
A. If you answered “Yes”
1. How many firearms are in your home or dwelling?
a. What kind(s)?
b. Where are weapons kept?
c. If you needed the gun for defense right now, how accessible and/or useful would it be to you?
2. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU PERSONALLY USED A FIREARM?
a. For what purpose?
2. For everyone:
If you could decide, what would “reasonable regulation” of firearms look like?
3. Have you ever used a gun for self-defense (against a person), and in what manner? Or do you personally know of someone who has (other than in war – or one of those stories heard from your cousin about his neighbor’s dentist’s brother or the like)? Versus, how many people have you been personally acquainted with who were killed by guns (except for war); how many were due to domestic violence?
The group answers are in the Update, accessible here.
They are just opinions of good people.
What is your opinion?
UPDATE February 21, 2013
My visit to the Capitol today was quite brief. The Hearing Room was limited to 40 people, with tickets. There were large numbers of people waiting in line for the overflow areas. In the end, I chatted with some nice people, took a few photos, and came home. Joan Peterson of Duluth is the lady in the photograph below. Her card gives a website of commongunsense.com which looks like a very informative site. She had the ticket to the proceedings, and she’s active in assorted ways, including Domestic Abuse Intervention, the Brady Campaign and Protect Minnesota.
The battle was between the buttons, today. “Minnesotans Against Being Shot” versus “Self-Defense is a Human Right”. At least one guy in line was packing heat. I picked up and am sporting a Minnesotans Against Being Shot, the button of ProtectMn.Org, “working to end gun violence”.
If you favor better regulation of firearms, now is the time to be very active with your elected officials at every level. Good things will come out of activism this year. The issue is on the table, and the NRA can’t control the conversation as they would like.
(click to enlarge photos)

In line. Note the holstered handgun

Joan

Two-sided sign

#690 – Dick Bernard: The run-up to the Iraq War, 10 Years ago.

February 16, 2013/0 Comments/in History, Minnesota, Politics, War /by dickbernard

Early today a friend sent a link to a commentary about massive world-wide demonstrations against the pending War against Iraq on February 15, 2003.
It brought back memories of those times for me. There was a big march in Minneapolis (photos included in this post) in which I participated.
(click to enlarge)

Feb. 15, 2003 Lake Street Minneapolis MN

Hennepin Avenue Minneapolis 2/15/2003 at the Lowry tunnel

The actual bombing of Baghdad – “Shock and Awe” it was dubbed – came about March 20.
There will be a one-hour retrospective about the war on Iraq on Rachel Maddow’s show on Monday night (8 p.m. CST MSNBC).
Only the most hardened war worshipers will be able to honestly say that the Iraq War was for a good cause and worth it.
Only those most hardened protestors will be able to declare their protests to have ended up in victory – to have made a significant difference. March after march in the ensuing months and years didn’t bring the troops home, and they’re still in Afghanistan and our nations economy almost destroyed by the reckless philosophy of fighting a war, supposedly without sacrifice, on the national credit card.
But both sides will likely declare their opposing narratives about Iraq and Afghanistan to be correct, and on we’ll go.
Among the other photos I took that day are these three, which each evoked certain thoughts and feelings:

Feb 15, 2003, Minneapolis

Feb. 15, 2003, Minneapolis

To my knowledge, there were no marches in the Twin Cities on February 15 or today, remembering the 10 year anniversary.
If there had been one, I’m not sure I would have gone. I burned out on demonstrations for the sake of demonstrating some time ago.
But I think the Peace Movement remains very much alive, only in a different form than how it was, then.
Particularly, I note the sign that says 65% of Americans are against the war.
I don’t know the source of the data for that number, but it fits with my recollection of the national mood back then, and it fits the national mood even more so today.
The neocons had their war, and in large measure have gone silent, except for occasional belligerent eruptions about how important it was to do this, that or the other, even without being able to show reasonable cause or positive long-term effect of invasion, bombing, torture and the like.
I was active then for Peace and Justice (I took those photos ‘on the street’, part of the marchers). I’m even more active now. I just do things a bit differently. Maybe I’m typical, maybe I’m the odd duck.
But I think we’re slowly on a more positive course, and with joint efforts, we can make this a more peaceful and just world.
That last message, “We will REAP what we SOW“, could end up being true.
We need to be the cause in the matter to prove it wrong.
It’s in our court, as individuals, in many tiny and not so tiny ways.
WE are the cause in the matter of our future.

#689 – Dick Bernard: 55-54, Five OT's….

February 14, 2013/0 Comments/in Community, Education, Family History, Minnesota, Quietings /by dickbernard

Now and then we go to watch 8th grader Ryan and his B-squad teammates play basketball. We’ve done this since he started in Woodbury Athletic Association (WAA) a few years ago.
Odds are that we haven’t watched a future State All-Star in any of these years. These are kids who like to play basketball, and each year you can see their skills develop: dribbling, passing, shooting, teamwork….
It’s fun.
Yesterday afternoon, Ryan’s team was playing Oak-Land, on their home court at Woodbury Middle School.
It was a fast moving game, and interesting (which, to me, means “close”). Towards the end, I thought Oak-Land was pulling away – as I recall they were up by 7 – but the Woodbury team tied the score, and the game went into overtime.
(click to enlarge photos)

Then a second overtime; then a third, a fourth, a fifth….
Overtimes started out at three minutes, then were reduced to two minutes, then came the fifth overtime, only a minute in duration.
Pressure was on. Perhaps there were 50 or so of we spectators there, and we became more attentive and animated. Such happens in close contests.
Then came the final free throw.
Of course, there’s no announcer at these games, and no high tech scoreboard technology saying who’s shooting, so it was just a Woodbury Middle School kid standing on the free throw line at the east end of the court, shooting two.
His first missed.
Then the second. Tension was on. I was trying to take a snapshot so could only listen to the results, and I knew by the cheering that the ball had found its target!

I doubt anybody from either side left the gym unhappy after that game. It was good, healthy competition and everybody played their best.
Thanks to the kids, the coaches, the ref, the fans, the public schools.
The kids congratulated each other, and off we all went.
It was good.

#687 – Dick Bernard: "Sykes High, oh Sykes High School of Dreams Come True…."

February 11, 2013/0 Comments/in Community, Education, Family History, History, North Dakota /by dickbernard

Note to reader:
Note: There are six other posts about Sykeston:
There are several other post I have done about Sykeston:
May 4 (the main article): Thoughts on Sykeston High School at its Centennial
May 9 A 1957 Social Studies Test
June 12 Remembering Sykeston in late 1940s
June 28 Snapshots in History of Sykeston
June 29 Sports in 1950s small towns in North Dakota
July 3: Remembering Don Koller and the Lone Ranger
This is also one of a series of posts spawned by recollections of attendance at Valley City (ND) State Teachers College 1958-61. This and the other items are (or will be) permanently accessible at January 2, 2013.
I was a tiny town kid. Sykeston High School, class of ’58, included eight of us. A ninth had dropped out mid-year to join the Air Force. (The subject heading for this blog was the School Song, written in 1942 by two students. Sykeston School Song002) The previous year I had attended Antelope Consolidated, a country Grades 1-12 school near Mooreton, and the Senior Class numbered two: a valedictorian and salutatorian. The smallness didn’t seem to hold us back: long-time U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan was fond of recalling that he graduated 5th in his class of 9 at Regent, in far southwest North Dakota.
Most of us at VCSTC were from tiny towns. In contemporary terms, even Valley City (2010 population 6585) would be considered nothing more than a town; John Hammer, a colleague freshman in 1958 from the surrounding Barnes County (2010 population: 11,066) said that in his high school times, aside from Valley City itself, there were 16 school districts with high schools in Barnes County – perhaps one high school for every 300 total people.
Sykeston was probably pretty typical of those hamlets many of we students called “home”. In 2008, after my 50th high school reunion (held coincident with Sykestons 125th anniversary), I managed to cobble together the data about that high schools graduating classes from the first, in 1917. You can learn a lot about ND from that graph including the fact that my high school closed in 2005, leaving behind only the stately building from 1913.
(click to enlarge)

Sykeston HS build 1913, photo in June 1958, Dick Bernard.

Valley City State Teachers College, then, was big-time for me, a country kid. It was founded in 1890, and was part of a State College system supervised by a Board. Here is the 1960 Board: ND State College Bd 1960001

Old Main VCSTC 1959

STC’s sports teams, then, were excellent, and the 1959 annual, in the Basketball section, notes the competition. The ND State Colleges played that year were: Wahpeton, Ellendale, Bottineau, Mayville, Minot, Bismarck & Dickinson. Some of these were Junior Colleges. Private Jamestown College was next-door arch-rival. VCSTC also played University of Manitoba, and S.D. schools Huron and Aberdeen.
Here is the current roster of North Dakota State Colleges. Ellendale long ago “bit the dust”. Devils Lake and Williston may or may not have existed in 1958. I’m not sure.
For whatever reason, I seem to have developed early an interest in what “school” in North Dakota meant, even back in college and early post-college years.
In June, 1961, for some reason I did a little research piece about the history of North Dakota Public Schools and published it in the Viking News which I then edited. I can remember writing the piece, but not why I chose to do it, though I don’t think it was an assignment. You can read it here: VCSTC ND Educ Jul 5 1961001. On rereading it, I think I was basically quite accurate. I probably used the college library sources for research.
In February, 1965, during one of those vaunted three-day blizzards in western North Dakota, I whiled away my time in our tiny apartment doing some more research on Changes in the Small Schools of North Dakota. I used the simplest of resources: the North Dakota School Directories and census data. Blizzard over, for no particular reason, I submitted the unpolished piece to the North Dakota Education Association which, much to my surprise, printed it in the April, 1965 issue: Changes in ND Small Schs001.
Later that month, an editorial about the article appeared in the Grand Forks (ND) Herald – a minor brush with fame.
It would be interesting to see someone update that 1965 blizzard-bound “research”.