#686 – Dick Bernard: Going to listen to Al Gore on "The Future. Six Drivers of Global Change"

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Al Gore was in Minneapolis on Thursday, and while I’ve been to lots of speeches, including by Mr. Gore, and didn’t really need to go, there is something that draws me to such events. I got to Westminster Presbyterian Church an hour early, but turned out to be a half-hour late: I got a seat, but in one of two overflow spaces. The house was packed for the longstanding Westminster Town Hall Forum.

Al Gore speaks Feb 7, 2013, Westminster Town Hall Forum Minneapolis MN

Al Gore speaks Feb 7, 2013, Westminster Town Hall Forum Minneapolis MN


I won’t write a review of the speech: you can listen to it here. (This is the instant video of the speech. Mr. Gore’s portion begins at approximately the 40 minute mark). At about the ten minute mark is a 30 minute musical concert by a twin cities musician, who was also very good.
Neither do I plan to review Mr. Gore’s book, “The Future. Six Drivers of Global Change“, which is readily available everywhere, and is meant for reflection, discussion and personal action.
“The Future” is a book for thinking, not entertainment.
I’ve long liked Al Gore. He is a visionary, not afraid to articulate a realistic vision if we wish to survive as a human species.
Visionaries, especially prominent ones, are often viewed as threats, and are vilified in sundry ways by their enemies.
So it was with Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth which was released in 2006, ridiculed by his enemies. But as current events in our country are showing, the film has been in all relevant particulars true, if anything, even conservative. Yes, there are “yah, buts” in the film, but as an acknowledged climate expert said at a meeting I attended a year or two ago, he said the film was 90% accurate, and this was from wisdom of hindsight.
We saw Mr. Gore speak on An Inconvenient Truth a year before the film was released, in 2005, and it was a memorable, never to be forgotten event. Here’s what I wrote about it then: Al Gore July 2005001. It is remarkable that this was eight years ago, already. Of course, largely, denial continues to be a prevalent reaction to things like Climate Change.
In so many ways we humans live with short-term thinking (“me-now”) and we imperil not only our present, but certainly our future. “An Inconvenient Truths” dust jacket made some suggestions back then that are still relevant today. They are here: Al Gore Inconven Truth001
“The Future” covers numerous topics other than just climate change, and covers them well.
In his talk, Mr.Gore said he got the idea for “The Future” several years ago – 2005 I seem to recall – from a question someone asked at a presentation he was making somewhere in Europe.
From that seed grew extensive research and reflection.
Mr. Gore suggests – that’s all he can is suggest – a wake-up call.
To those who think the cause is hopeless, he asked simply that we remember changes like Civil Rights in this country, which in his growing up days in Tennessee would not have been seen as a possibility either. It is the people that will change the status quo, he said, recalling a particular learning moment in his youth when a friend of his made a racist comment, and another friend told him to cut it out. It is small moments of public witness like these that make the difference, he suggested. He gave other examples as well.
Of course, Gore is a prominent world figure, a former Vice-President, and now a very wealthy man.
But in his appearance, yesterday, he was part of us – he even stopped by the overflow rooms before his speech to give a personal welcome. It was a nice touch, we felt.
By our demeanor – I like to watch how audiences react at events like this – we were very actively listening to him.
It’s past-time to get personally involved, but never too late.
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Mr. Gore stops by one of the two overflow rooms prior to his speech.

Mr. Gore stops by one of the two overflow rooms prior to his speech.

#685 – Dick Bernard: An e-mail from Vanuatu: Changing Communications Means…and the potential threats therein

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My sister, Mary Ann, decided to begin her retirement years by taking her skills as Nurse Practitioner to the Peace Corps.
Since early October she’s been in the south Pacific island country of Vanuatu, a remote place east of Australia that I had never heard of. Since November 10, 2012, I’ve been sharing her experiences in an ever longer blog post which you can read, here. The most recent note from her was yesterday, and it is at the very end of the post.
(click to enlarge)

Vanuatu, South Pacific

Vanuatu, South Pacific


A couple of days ago came a news bulletin that the south Pacific had been hit with an 8.0 earthquake, with threat of tsunami. Vanuatu was mentioned, and I got concerned. After all, my sister now lived there, and I had just heard from her that she had just moved to a new island to do some work. It was all a routine deal, but the routine changed with the announcement of the quake.
Still, you don’t just pick up a phone and call Vanuatu. The last letter from Mary Ann took 13 days from writing to being received here. Things are different.
They’re very different than long ago, however.
She has limited opportunity to use e-mail, but she told us she was safe via an e-mail (reprinted in the aforementioned blog), and that she’d gotten the all-clear about the tsunami threat via a text message from, presumably, the home office of Peace Corps in Port Vila, Vanuatu. Her site was, she said, about 600 miles from the actual epicenter of the quake, so she was a long ways away. She didn’t even mention feeling the quake. Sea was calm.
The episode got me thinking back to WWII and that same part of the Pacific. My Uncle (and Mary Ann’s as well), Lt. George W. Busch, was a Naval Officer on a Destroyer in the Pacific Theatre, and he wrote many letters to his sweetheart, then his bride, from there. And she wrote back. And they kept all of the letters, which I had an opportunity to read a few years ago.
How terribly tense it had to be, then.
As WWII went on, people learned of the carnage at places like Tarawa beachhead, and knew their soldier or sailor was over there somewhere, but for all sorts of reasons had to endure long delays to get information about living, or dying. It was over a month, for instance, before my grandparents and Dad knew for sure that their son and brother, Frank Bernard, had been killed on the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.
By the end of the war, the U.S. became really pretty proficient in getting information back and forth from the South Seas and other places, but, still, one could count on at least a week from the time a letter was written till it was received.
Lots can happen in a week.
Even in Vanuatu, today, Mary Ann is hooked in, and in almost an instant a single e-mail from her (there have only been two or three thus far), can be transmitted worldwide in seconds.
We can’t imagine what it must have been like years ago.
But we aren’t out of the woods, either.
Yesterdays news included a clip that the entire electronic network to which we have become virtual slaves is potentially at risk due to cyber threats from others (as, they are at risk from us – this is not a one-way game). Our convenience hangs by a rather slender thread, and if the network goes down, everything is affected. Gives cause to wonder.
Tuesday’s paper brought an interesting column about our collected data, generally. Well worth the read. Energy Inefficiency, It’s In the Cloud.
And Al Gore is in Minneapolis today, speaking on his new book The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change. I think I’ll stop over. Westminster Presbyterian Church at noon today. Free. Get there early.

#684 – Dick Bernard: Towards a rational conversation about guns and need for their regulation….

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UPDATE February 11, 2013: February 8 I posted a very brief survey to 46 persons on my long standing peace and justice mailing list. The survey was about Guns. Ultimately, 23 responded to the questions, and the entire compilation can be read here: Gun Survey Feb 82013R1. I was surprised both by the number of responses, and the kinds of responses received. This may help the reader clarify his or her own mind about the issue of Guns in our Society, and the survey certainly hi-lites the complexity of the issue needing affirmative resolution. This is an issue that needs both speaking and very active listening with an eye to resolving the issue.
Here is how I summarized my feelings on the issue to my Government representatives: Gun Issue Position Feb 2013
THE ORIGINATING POST.
Today is the holiest of holy days in the United States: Super Bowl XLVII Sunday, where gladiators from Baltimore and San Francisco meet on the field of battle in New Orleans to determine the Champion of the World, at least for today. Then there is the Super Bowl of Super Bowl Ads. Now there’s clamoring for a National Day Off for the day following the Super Bowl….
But then we’re also in the real world: Yesterday’s paper front page lede was about a gang member being convicted for a random act of violence: shooting up the house of a rival, killing a 5 year old in the process. It was the second family member killed in that house. Later in the day, on-line, the same paper had a picture story about President Obama shooting skeet at Camp David…which the NRA mostly ridiculed.
I wish the President hadn’t felt the need to prove he’d actually shot a gun, even in skeet, but, hey, this is America in the year of irrational talk about the need for rational gun regulation.
Additional Post on this specific Topic: here and here.
It happened that the same day a cousin (her Mom and my Mom were first cousins, their parents brothers and sisters) sent a photograph of her Dad, Don Thimmesch, who was among the first 53 highway patrolmen in Iowa (1935). (More here.) And it reminded me of another photo she had sent me some years earlier, of her Mom, Cecilia Thimmesch, who was a national champion marksman with the Rifle.
Best I know, Cecilia is the only National Champion on either side of my family. Hers was a well-earned accomplishment.
Their photos are below:

Don Thimmesch, ca 1935, first class of highway patrol in Iowa


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Cecilia Thimmesch, Champion with the Rifle, 1939


Daughter, Carol, is rightly proud of her parents, as she has a right to be.
They were responsible gun users.
If we could go back to those olden days.
But not likely.
As I write, a radical government hater in Alabama is holed up in his survival cellar with a young school child as hostage after shooting the school bus driver last week. In his mind he had some point to make. [Note February 5, 2013: the kidnapper is dead, the child was rescued, yesterday.]
There is no good end to this gun story, as there are seldom good ends to gun stories, unless the gunman comes out of his cave with hands-up before the youngster and the gunman both die.
I suppose the guy thought he could beat the government by being armed and dangerous, having a hostage, and going into his underground shelter.
The moment he took action, he’d lost. And so had his innocent victim.
Yes, we do need to talk about rationale and new gun policies everywhere in this land. A suburban police chief from this area described the problem well, very recently: According to my friend, Greg, who knows the chief personally, here’s what he said: “He told of the progression of weapons his police officers carry. First it was a shotgun in the squad car. Then it became an MP-5. Now his officers carry an AR-15. The reason for the progression to greater and greater firepower? As Scott testified, the changes were necessary to keep pace with what the bad guys are carrying.”
In my opinion the NRA spokespeople can go to hell, at least in their current role as shill for the gun industry.
Where does one start on a “rational conversation”? Maybe how guns were viewed when Donald and Cecilia became noteworthy in Iowa, in the 1930s.

Here’s a commentary I received from a great friend who’s a school bus driver and lives on rural property in Vermont:
From Peter, February 1, 2013
The Samurai Always Left Their Long Knives at the Door
For some reason it has been slow going, looking at this crazy, bloody couple of months. My school has been locked down for a week now. Some jerk said something scary.
As a school bus driver it kind of struck a nerve when somebody shot a driver in Alabama and (at this writing) is holed up in a bunker with a kidnapped five-year-old. I guess the NRA would say all school bus drivers should be packing now. Among the drivers I know, every one of them would get between a shooter and a student without thinking about it first, and still would not carry a gun on the bus.
Among all the people I know, I can’t think of more than one or two I’d want to be around if they were “carrying.” For myself, if I ever find out somebody’s packing heat, I will explain that this is a problem that precludes whatever purpose brought us into the building, and leave.
Around here people check with the parents of their children’s playmates to see if they have guns in the house, and whether they are safely locked away. Half the kids around here, at a guess, are crack shots with a deer rifle.
As for hunters, almost every hunter I’ve met on my property has been drunk, and has pointed the gun carelessly at me or at their friends or their own feet, heads, whatever. I have zero faith in hunters to be “responsible gun owners.” We lose two or three a year, here, including kids, to accidental shootings. A farmer was shot while driving his tractor, mistaken for a deer. A blueberry-picker was shot, mistaken for a bear. Two died last year when one mistook the other for the deer, and then, seeing his mistake, shot himself. Best friends and long-standing hunting club members. This is in a county it takes about half an hour to cross on dirt roads.
I thought the police were supposed to be the ones with the guns and the training about when to shoot people. Imagine whipping out a Glock 9 in a shopping mall, for any reason. Whom would the cops point their guns at?
I like one idea I’ve heard: gun-owners’ insurance, similar to car insurance. Mandatory and expensive and track-record based. This sort of solution functions like a check-dam, changing the course of change rather than trying to plug the system. We used to call this “trim tabbing.”
The NRA is simply out of control, and should be investigated and drowned in lawsuits and put out of its misery, like the KKK.

#683 – Dick Bernard: The Cost of Fear; the Power of Speaking Out.

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Artists rendition of "Banana clip" automatic rifle seen at a Minneapolis restaurant


Yesterday I was at a local restaurant having a cup of coffee, and writing some letters. It’s a very ordinary activity for me. For some reason, I ‘ve always worked best where there’s some hubbub around.
At the next table, very close by, four men, obviously friends, and probably in their 50s, were conversing about this and that and at some point one of them mentioned that he had been actively thinking about ordering an AR-15, and a gun cabinet to go with it.
The chat went on a short while, then he mentioned the topic had come to the attention of his spouse, and apparently he had changed his mind: she would have nothing to do with the purchase. As he described it, they had an interesting conversation….
If I heard it right, I was listening to one smart man, talking about one powerful woman who had something to say about one important matter: an assault rifle in the home.
The conversation got me thinking in a direction I hadn’t considered before: how much does an AR-15 really cost?
I don’t have a gun, and I don’t plan to have one, and I don’t stop to look at guns in stores or even look at ads about guns. I don’t know the details about todays killing machines.
When I got home I googled AR-15, and there were lots of references.
Succinctly, if you can get the assault rifle (there’s been a run on them – supply and demand), it is not cheap. And that’s just for the weapon.
Plus, a well-equipped AR-15 owner should have a range of accessories to go with the gun, all which cost money; things like the locked cabinet, the ammunition, the gun range, etc., etc.
I also noted a more than subtle paranoid edge to the websites peddling AR-15.
Most merchants sing the praises of their product. These sites were less than welcoming or disclosing. No smiley-faces there.
Any reader can challenge my assertion, simply by doing what I did: google “AR-15 cost”.
So, if I heard this totally decent looking and sounding man correctly, he won’t be getting his new gun, and the family relations will be better, and he’ll have money to spend in more productive ways.
I am not, by the way, anti-weapon. Never have been. I am against the insanity of combat weapons for “self-defense”.
Would this guy lug his AR-15 with him everywhere? If he ever had need for the weapon at home, could he find the key to the cabinet? Would the cabinet be where he needed it to be when he needed it? Would he be thinking clearly when he was squeezing the trigger?
Would his investment prove to a blessing or a curse?
Back home I listened to gun victim and survivor Gabby Giffords brief and extremely powerful testimony to a Senate Committee on the issues of Guns. Her husband Mark Kelly’s testimony as well. And the testimony of NRA’s Wayne LaPierre.
Giffords and Kelly made sense. LaPierre simply “came out with guns blazing” and made no sense at all. He was speaking raw power, bullying behavior, that was all.
I’d recommend support for the Giffords/Kelly brand new website on Americans Responsible For Solutions (they are both gun owners, and not against guns per se).
And another good site to get acquainted with is the Brady Campaign.
There’s no need to be afraid of getting into this conversation. It may even do a lot of good.