October 2014 – Thoughts Towards a Better World

#947 – Dick Bernard: One week to the 2014 Election. Vote, and vote well-informed, on November 4.

October 28, 2014/0 Comments/in Politics /by dickbernard

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DFL (Democrat) candidate Joann Ward’s Campaign mailer late Oct, 2014

It happened that on almost the same day campaign mailers arrived in our St. Paul suburban mailbox advocating for the election of either the DFL (Democratic) or Republican candidate for state Legislature in our Minnesota legislative district. The JoAnn Ward (Incumbent and Democrat) mailer is above; that of her Republican challenger Lukas Czech is also on this page. Look carefully at both. There is an obvious and great contrast in both tone and content. (Click to enlarge both, which in original form were much larger in size.)
The two fliers give, in my opinion, a very accurate distinction between the Democrat and Tea Party (Republican) narrative at this moment in history.
There is a very major choice this November 4, as there is in every election.
Our personal electoral choices, including whether we choose to vote at all, have long term implications – at least for the next two years.
Last May, I had the great privilege of meeting and then working with a Fulbright/Humphrey Fellow through the Human Rights Center at the University of Minnesota Law School. Ehtasham, a civil official in a large city in Pakistan, was nearing the end of his year in the United States. Early on in our work relationship he mused about about the U.S. as perceived by his country, and his experience in our Twin Cities. His observation (as I recall it): “the people I have met here are good people; how is it that they support U.S. policies that are so dangerous to us in our parts of the world?”
This was the gist of what could have been a very long conversation, and came up more than once.
My succinct answer: we choose our leaders, and too often we make very bad choices, particularly by not thinking through the implications of who we’re voting for, or, as important, by our non-vote. Too often we are sloppy citizens
Last Saturday evening Michael Smerconish of CNN commented on a Pew Research survey that really helps to explain why the political conversation in America is so dominated by the far Right and far Left, and the results so unrepresentative of the U.S. community-at-large. You can watch his commentary here, and read the data here; especially note the first two graphics.
If you don’t vote, you lose. It is as simple as that.
In 2010 the very angry Tea Party Right Wing, who still dominates the political conversation as Republicans in Congress and in many state houses and legislatures, turned out to vote; great numbers of Democrats stayed home; and even more of what is called the Progressive Left either refused to vote at all, or voted for fringe candidates with no chance of winning anything, calling their action a vote for “principal”.

campaign mailer late Oct, 2014

Every two years you have a single opportunity to select your representatives for our Democracy.
It is a crucial choice.
Vote well informed on November 4, and urge others to vote as well.
Recent related posts here and here.

#946 – Dick Bernard: Financing Elections. Transparency vs the Gutless Wonders of Dark Money

October 23, 2014/0 Comments/in Media, Minnesota, Politics /by dickbernard

Last Fall I volunteered to become Treasurer for my local state legislators re-election campaign. This was a voluntary decision. Rep. JoAnn Ward is a stellar representative, taking her duty to represent all very seriously. I felt helping a little was the least I could do.
But the experience has not been without stumbles. Succinctly, I was to Campaign Treasurer, as a 1920s kid was to learning all the intricacies of the Model A Ford.
Even today I am not a full-service Treasurer. I am too old a dog to learn all of the requisite new tricks required in the technological age!
But by now, I’m fairly comfortable with the process and to a certain degree the technology I’m required to use.
One of the many things I’ve learned is that Minnesota Election Law mandates transparency.
If you donate, you’re known by the name on your contribution. You become an “entity”: your name and address on file within the state reporting system.
There is only a single exception that I know of: donations of $20 and below can be received as “anonymous”, and the Campaign Finance Board computer won’t kick them back. So it was that on Monday I had to enter the contents of several plain envelopes, with no markings, each including cash up to $20. (Such donations are infrequent, I’ve found.) People apparently know the rules. If somebody “anonymously” put a $50 bill in a plain envelope, how could I possibly return it? Nothing like that has happened, and probably won’t.
Similarly, if a contribution is $200 or more, the system demands to know the persons employer or work (“retired”, “homemaker” and such qualify as descriptors). Registered Lobbyists must reveal themselves and there are strict limits on how much lobbying money can be accepted by candidates.
In short, the system is pretty tight, and pretty fair: you enter the process and you are a known person.
So, “the Gutless Wonders of Dark Money”?
This morning the Al Franken campaign (U.S. Senator, Minnesota) sent the latest fund-raising appeal, beginning: “One “dark money” group, Hometown Freedom Action Network, just launched the largest attack against me yet — backed by $331,OOO in online ads.”
U.S. Senate is under Federal Campaign rules, and here comes the “wild west” of “freedom of speech” and playing games with Federal Law.
I looked up the dark money group, and two interesting sites are here and here. Both sites speak for themselves.
Hometown Freedom’s site does have a contact tab, but unless I’m missing something obvious, it is impossible to know anything about the group, who’s in it, where it’s located, etc.
It appears to be Minnesota based, and it is mostly out to take down Sen. Franken through television ads, which will be ubiquitous for the last couple of weeks of the campaign.
Of course, I don’t know the “facts”, because I’m not supposed to know the facts, but from all appearances it would be a tight coalition of likely wealthy Minnesotans who have pooled their resources to finance anti-Franken attack ads.
They don’t want anyone to know who they are.
(The second site, OpenSecrets.org, is helpful in identifying who Hometown Freedom’s money goes to help, or hurt….
At least for this time in history, “dark money” is a major player in Federal elections.
There’s time to continue talking about transparency after this election is over. Till then, if you watch the ads at all, look for the disclaimer which they are all required to carry. Most likely, as with Hometown Freedom, it will say, essentially, nothing.
I’ll give Sen. Franken the last word, again from his solicitation: “The term “dark money” sort of brings to mind the picture of a billionaire, sneering behind a desk in a creepy mansion, wringing his or her hands menacingly while funneling money into anonymous attacks against me…There’s no telling how much these dark money groups can squeeze out of their deep-pocketed backers to attack us with.”
I don’t think he’s far off in his analysis.

#945 – Dick Bernard: Two Weeks before the 2014 Election.

October 21, 2014/0 Comments/in Politics /by dickbernard

Previous related posts: here and here.
There is no magic in the next two weeks. The difference will be measured strictly by how many people actually vote on November 4.
Vote yourself, and urge everyone you know to vote, and for everyone, to vote with full awareness of the implications of your vote (or non-vote). This is our country, our democracy.
Since President Obama has been made to be an issue in this election, it interested me that Saturday’s Minneapolis Star Tribune had an letter about worst Approval ratings of past U.S. Presidents:
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Given incessant attacks by his enemies, President Obama seems to be doing right fine, especially given that the entire Republican program for the past six years has been to try to drive down his approval numbers: to make him seem to be a failure.
A day or two earlier, another poll assessed the dismal approval of Congress, very recently another poll apparently gave Congress 8% approval. I looked for a longer term tracking. Here’s one from Gallup. The craziness of we Americans is that people think THEIR Congressperson is the exception to the rule…. (at this link is another poll that says that 24% of Americans essentially are in synch with the Tea Party. One might ask why, then, does the Tea Party wield such out of proportion political influence, local, state, national? It is not a difficult question: for starters, they voted, too many of the other 76% didn’t vote in the previous two elections.)
Soon we’ll know what we Americans decided, by our vote, our non-vote, our informed or uninformed vote, or vote passed on whatever whimsical or factual thing has enamored us, such as “they’re all alike, it makes no difference who’s elected” for instance; “she’s (candidate) attractive and seems like a nice person”, and on and on. We will get exactly what we voted for (or against).
Last week I submitted the below letter to the local newspaper on my personal take on America and Americans. I’ll see, tomorrow, if it made the cut:
“Long ago, November 19, 1863 at Gettysburg, President Abraham Lincoln made his famous two minute address which included these words: “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”.
For some years now we’ve been engaged in another kind of “civil war”, waged largely in sound bites and made for television advertising.
This war is about who’ll run things, and how (collaboratively, or dominance). It is waged by attempting to restrict access to voting, and to influence voters to make decisions not in their best interest.
Nowadays, in my opinion, what Lincoln’s words (possibly borrowed from a quote by John Wycliffe about the Bible in 1384), have come to mean is the influence of great wealth in managing the political conversation. The words, “The people” have been replaced by “the rich”, in many ways.
Perhaps we all think that we, too, will become rich; that somehow we can prevail and live the high life above the common folks.
As for the rich, a tiny few do succeed, perhaps even in the long term. But they are the very tiny few.
Several years ago I had the unpleasant duty of sorting out the affairs of a relative who’d lost his house and was destitute.
The immediate cause was the Minnesota Lottery. But in the detritus of his possessions I found videos of getting rich in real estate (“no money down”) and Ayn Rand’s paean to greed: “The Virtue of Selfishness”.
Tuesday, November 4, like all election days, is a referendum on what we mean by “we, the people of the United States” (the first words of our Constitution) when we have another opportunity to choose who’ll make government decisions affecting us.
Our choices have consequences, especially so for the rich.
Someone needs to have the money to spend to make Black Friday possible. It’s as simple as that.
Cast a well informed vote November 4.”

#944 – Dick Bernard: Rightsizing.

October 18, 2014/0 Comments/in Community, Environment, Family History, Minnesota, Nature, North Dakota /by dickbernard

This past week was a phenomenal early fall day in our area, easily matching the postcard vistas featured for Maine on the evening news. A couple of days ago, I took this snapshot along my walking route: just some brush along the shore of a storm drainage pond. Whatever the source, it’s a nice pic, and I invite you to click on it to enlarge.
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October 16, 2014, Woodbury MN

The photo doesn’t match at all the title of this post, nor the content to follow, except that this kind of scene would have been seen by my parents and grandparents and all generations before in their times in this part of the world. The only difference is that we can now take photographs of them, and even amateurs like myself can do an okay job with our equipment (mine a Samsung).
This post was, rather, spurred on by a headline I saw in the Business section of the Wednesday Minneapolis Star Tribune: “Earlier Black Friday spreading” (Oct 15, 2014). Shortly, the “Christmas” music will become a constant at my coffee shop, and the “shop till you drop” drumbeat will begin, to buy more than you need, with money you may not have, to give to someone who may not want the gift given. I suspect there are plenty who will be just as happy when this “joyous” season passes, as will be the merchants…and churches…for whom this two months or so is a major generator of money in the till.
There is no “Christ in Christmas” here in our country, at least not publicly, or it has to wrestle in to get any genuine attention.
This summer I’ve had much more than a normal opportunity to reflect on how material goods diminish in value (and interest) as the twilight of life comes.
We’ve spent the summer dealing with the treasures of a 109 year old farm in North Dakota, where everything had a use, or future use. My Uncle and Aunt kept everything.
Leaving aside assorted large goods, like an old farmers dining room table, the first cut of the treasures in the house and farmyard occupies a small portion of storage. There are really valuable things to me, an historian, like photos and books, but the essence of the residue shows in this picture from inside my garage, taken this week.

October 16, 2014

I do not worry about these boxes being stolen. A self-respecting thief might ask “why did they keep THAT?” But I certainly won’t fault my Aunt and Uncle. They were being prudent stewards of what they were given, even if most of it had no earthly use for them, or anyone who follows.
I retired fourteen years ago, and in the same year moved from one suburb to another.
When I left my last work career of 27 years, I took home two boxes. The one I use quite often is pictured below. The second I’ve never opened and thus should be sent for recycling.
The ten years of living in a condo yields this box of “knick knacks” (also pictured). It hasn’t been opened since I moved, and likely won’t be until someone goes through my stuff and asks “why in the world did he keep THAT?
I could show my Dad’s two boxes, same story.
You get the point, I think.
Why not give more attention to downsizing, than getting more and more? Profits are okay, but there can be other priorities as well.

Oct 10, 2014

October 10, 2014, in a suburban garage.

October 10, 2014, Woodbury MN

#943 – Dick Bernard: Three weeks before the 2014 Election. The Obama Presidency, near six years out; and the Tea Party movement tries to re-incarnate itself.

October 14, 2014/0 Comments/in Politics /by dickbernard

I’m liberal, but very moderate, and passionate about the need for people to understand each other and to find common ground. Three weeks before the 2014 election, some thoughts, the main one: VOTE, AND VOTE WELL INFORMED.
First, this week, Nobel Prize economist Paul Krugman wrote a long commentary about his view of the reality of the Obama presidency so far. You can read it here. This is an important commentary, whether or not you like the President.
Another e-mail brought a column by Joan Walsh on how anti-government intervention in matters of public medicine complicates the current fight against Ebola. You can read it here.
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This time of year, Mid-September and October in 2008, was the moment the harsh truth hit the George W. Bush presidency, and all of us. That month and a half was a very anxious time for me.
We were all watching the American economy nearing collapse, and in October 2008 I took personal steps to hopefully insure some kind of floor on my 401(k) hoping that some of it might possibly be left as the economy careened towards a fiscal cliff. There was the residue of a Iraq war we were fighting, unsuccessfully, on the national credit card, and essentially zero national fiscal discipline. This was a very Republican time. We Americans tend to forget that up till near the end of 2008, the fantasy of “let the good times roll” prevailed in America. We couldn’t see bad times ahead, and “winning” a losing battle in Iraq remained the priority of the Bush administration. To be against a disastrous war was unpatriotic.
Remember, 2001-2009 was Republican time, not Democrat.
Then came President Obama.
The President had not even been inaugurated in 2009, when direct and very public messages went out from the Republican leadership that their objective was to see the Obama presidency fail.
Most famously, Sen. Mitch McConnell and Rush Limbaugh were very publicly on record. Ever since the Republican party has done its damnedest in every way possible to sabotage everything President Obama proposed to do.
The very word “Obama” became a mantra of derision (as “Obamacare”, being repeatedly and symbolically repealed by the Congress). A key strategy for elections (2010 and 2012 and now, 2014) has been to make them referendums against President Obama.
Even though President Obama is not running for anything this year, and in any event cannot run for President again, he is again, cynically and dishonestly, being portrayed as the primary issue in this election.
After a brief time of Democrat control, as you recall, in 2010, the Tea Party raged into control of the U.S. House of Representatives, and picked up folks like Ted Cruz in the U.S. Senate, and it went to work for failure – failure for which it hold Obama accountable and with him, the Democrats.
For the once proud “Grand Old Party”, political success came to mean achieving failure.
So, what actually happened in the Obama years thus far?
Paul Krugmans commentary, referred to above, is not the only such commentary. Those who know, know that President Obama, with support from Democrats, has made progress against all odds. It was one-sided progress, largely because the Republicans largely refused to work together to resolve issues on matters of substance .
What might have happened if, as normally might be reasonably expected, had our government legislators worked together to do the best they could for those they represented?
In the second paragraph of his commentary, Krugman says the president was “naive” in his first term, facing “scorched-earth Republican opposition from Day One.”
Everyone, of course, can have his or her own opinion.
In my opinion, with my own life experiences dealing with fervent opposition, it is reasonable that President Obama and his advisers knew exactly what they were doing from even before taking office. They knew what they were up against.
There’s an old saying about giving someone “enough rope to hang themselves”. Obama was much criticized for attempting to compromise with his enemies from the very beginning. He was, I would suggest, “dumb like a fox”. He tried to work together – to fashion compromise – and I think he was sincere. I doubt he expected he’d get cooperation, but he did try…. This was not an act without consequences. People to his left accused him of selling out. People I know well, and respect, who are far to the left of me, think Obama is too moderate, even conservative. Far too many protested by not voting at all in the 2010 election. So be it.
This brings to mind the Party of Tea:
It was in the wake President Obama’s election that the outraged folks of Tea Party fame went on the attack, with huge success in the election of 2010, with the biggest issue, it appeared to me on the sidelines, as Affordable Care. How dare he propose that more people could have affordable medical coverage.
His race was a big player as well.
I tend to be engaged in politics, so over the last five years I’ve been to many public events where Tea Party types made their presence offensively known.
It is an accurate generalization, I feel, to label Tea Party leaders as disrespectful bullies, most often loud and large and dominating white men, out to drown out any opposing voices. They were intimidating to take on. Over and over, they exposed themselves as fact challenged, but this seemed to make no difference to them. Facts were irrelevant. A descriptor I first saw in print regarding 1974 campaigns, “disrupt, confuse, display anger“, fit these folks like a glove. Their interest was power, period.
Fast forward to today. The Tea Party image has been tarnished – after a while even bullies lose their ability to intimidate – and it has become obvious that those loud and large folks I describe above have moved into the background, to be replaced by people with the exact same anti-government philosophy, but seemingly kind and gentle looking types with good hair and smiles and cuddly and cute kinds of ads. We have one of these running for a local legislative seat, another for Governor, and many others. They are, all of them, simply, stealth candidates.
Make no mistake, the same people as in the early 200os, just wearing a different costume.
So be it, that Obama is the issue in 2014. Against great odds, President Obama has accomplished very good things with Democrats help. His is a record to be proud of.
As for the Republican right, if your program is fear, loathing and failure, how can you possibly switch gears to a program of optimism, inclusion and success if you win? And you’ll be faced, now, with the same problem that you modeled for the Democrats in the last four years, if you end up in the majority?
As the saying goes, two can play this game.
We all lose.
Vote with your eyes wide open on November 4. By all means, vote.
POSTNOTE: While preparing the above, an e-mail came from our dear friend, who immigrated to the U.S. after WWII:
I am disturbed by the attitude of supposedly successful, intelligent people.
One question someone asked me:
“What do you think of America today compared to the America when you came,— or 1960??”
Good question, I thought.
Answer: the America I found when I came was loved and almost revered by at least most countries.
Our soldiers who came home could get an almost free college education to better their and their families lives.
We are aware today is sadly not comparable to then.
If you have a child in college — the cost of higher education for most families almost takes what they have saved for their retirement. The young people have to postpone purchasing a home, start a family. Inflation — cost of nursing home care — down grading of education— I could go on, but I think you see what I use for examples.
Another man:
“What do you say to the people on food stamps, they should go and work, not rely on the government handouts.”
Looking at the $7.55 minimum wage, I don’t call food stamps a hand out.
Technically, we are all dependent in one way or another on the government — lets call them subsidies — our roads, schools, farming —- I could go on —- but I think you understand.
I am amazed at the questions I get.
To one very bright 8th grader with an I Pad.
“My question is do you own your IPad?”
“Oh, no the school got it for me.”
“You like it”
“Yes, now when I need to solve a problem in English or math I go to the Ipad, it has all the answers and I don’t have to think anymore.”
Believe me,. If I still were a teacher, the iPad would NOT ever be used for school work.

#942 – Dick Bernard: Another delightful night at the Minnesota Orchestra.

October 13, 2014/0 Comments/in Community, Minnesota, Quietings /by dickbernard

We went to our subscription season opener on Saturday evening, and it was, as always, a delightful experience.
Andrew Litton conducted a program of Richard Strauss: Don Quixote: Fantastic Variations on a Theme of Knightly Character; Salome’s Dance (Dance of the Seven Veils); Suite from Der Rosenkavalier.
It was a marvelous, fun program.
Through the program I kept thinking of a bookend someone gave me once, that sort of reminds me of Don Quixote, for some odd reason. Here it is (yes, it badly needs a dusting):

We’ve now been to several performances of the Minnesota Orchestra post-lockout (the lockout began two years ago, September 30, 2012, and ended in early February, 2014.) We’re glad to be back, and the people we see seem to be so as well.
Lurking not far in the background, reasonably, is the long impasse. But we’re moving on, it seems.
These days, I have begun to make sure I look at every page of the program booklet, just to make sure I don’t miss anything.
In Saturdays Showcase, for Sep-Nov, 2014, came a most interesting article, “a continuum of contributions”. You can read it here: MN Orchestra Oct 2014001. It speaks for itself.
Doubtless much effort and edit and review and revision went into the article. One can look for what is said, and what isn’t, and in what order of emphasis (which is as meaningfilled as the text itself)
I felt it a reasonable representation of the current reality.
One wonders, however, how the gap between the $10 million anonymous donor, and the equally anonymous $1 donor, will be bridged.
Money talks, the more money, the more the listening.
But the small folks are now, as before “the franchise” that is the Minnesota Orchestra. None of these folks are on anyone’s address book, but in the long run they will make all the difference.
As for us, we’re glad we’re back, and looking forward to a great season ahead. Yes, I’m a Guarantor (I think about $500 worth over my career). Nonetheless, we’re invited to a special performance led by Osmo Vanska next weekend. Quite likely we’ll go….
Nice touch.

#941 – Dick Bernard: Four Weeks, 28 days to Election Day

October 7, 2014/0 Comments/in Politics /by dickbernard

Personal suggestion: Know all of the candidates who are on your ballot for the November 4 election, and what they stand for, then vote your choices. For Minnesotans, the Minnesota election weblink is here. I would suspect that each state’s Secretary of State has a similar page.
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Yesterday afternoon I noted a man wearing one of those Minnesota “I Voted” decals. Two women at a neighboring table asked him about it, and he said he had, like many Minnesotans already, voted early. The process is easy and convenient and beats standing in line on Election Day.

Nov 4, 2010, Woodbury MN

An hour or two earlier I received an unanticipated phone call from a friend, lifelong Kansan, who we’d last seen eight years ago, travelling through her town just off I-35.
Yesterday, we had a lot of catching up to do, including the state of politics in Kansas. People who follow politics even a little know what’s going on in Kansas. Right wing Governor Sam Brownback and long-time very conservative Kansas Republican Senator Pat Roberts are apparently both in very serious trouble, electorally, and may lose their jobs. Time will tell. Whether they win or lose on Nov. 4, things are not happy in Kansas.
But my friend said that even if these two powerful politicians lost, it may not resolve the very serious in-state problems: right-wing conservatives control the state legislature to an extent that if the present configuration continues legislation they pass will be veto proof, even if the Governor changes. And there seems no ground swell in the electorate sufficient to change membership of the legislature enough to bring some balance to the political discourse, even though the status quo is not working well, even for many of the proponents of right wing dominance in government.
There are plenty of Democrats in Kansas. There apparently just aren’t enough of them to bring any balance to the political conversation, and even many normal conservatives are apparently upset with the status quo.
Welcome to American politics.
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Four weeks from now Americans will decide in every state and in every community who will represent them for the next two years.
Political decision making is a bit like the weather: unpredictable. Maybe there’ll be sunshine today, or your house will be destroyed in a tornado, or flood. The difference is, of course, in American politics, people can make the decision.
They will make their choices freely, and if recent past tradition continues, there will be gridlock and a government so ineffective that the vast majority of Americans say thumbs down to the Congress. President Obama’s rating, while poor, is atmospheric compared to the U.S. Congress. Still, we may choose more gridlock, than collectively demanding cooperation in making policy to the benefit of all.
In my own state, and many others, many people have already voted (in the restaurant scene described above, the man didn’t inkle, and the ladies didn’t ask, for whom he voted). He did encourage them to vote, however.
Everyone should help the candidate(s) of their choice, and let others they know their preferred choices.
Of course, we have a secret ballot, but we don’t have to keep our choices a secret.
And if you don’t know about “x” candidate, and can’t find out, ask someone you trust for their opinion.
*
Personal opinion: The “American people” will make a big collective decision on November 4. There is a huge difference between the contemporary very radical Republican Party philosophy (obstruct everything the opposition wants, unite in opposition to anything proposed by President Obama, with an end to ultimately gain complete control of government); and the Democrat (which is really quite akin to the old school progressive Republican sense of government).
Lest we forget there was a time, recently, when one party controlled the House, Senate and White House. It was the Republican era of 2001-2007. It was the time including 9-11-01, approaching economic collapse due to utter failure of responsible economic policy, and the Iraq War and Afghanistan. Congress 1977-2011001.
We are still paying a heavy price for those years which featured heavy spending, particularly on war, and big tax cuts.
If we wake up on November 5, 2014, with a Republican Senate, and an even more Republican House of Representatives (President Obama is President for two more years), we condemn ourselves to moving towards what Kansas is putting itself through now, but the consequences will carry on, even if a Republican is elected as President in 2016.
In such an event – one party controlling the government – what is to stop the minority party from simply following the contemporary Republican example of deliberate obstruction?
At this space, five years ago, I deliberately labeled myself “a moderate pragmatic Democrat”. I spoke and speak as a person who liked Ike (Eisenhower was President in my high school and college years); a person whose most significant political mentor (and great personal friend) was Elmer L. Andersen, progressive Republican Governor of Minnesota; and so on. The contemporary Republican party has thrown out its moderates, opting for a hard-edged take-no-prisoners approach to control.
Kansas is, apparently, learning a harsh lesson in what it means to embrace radical government, where a single “wing” is in control. As a single winged bird cannot fly, neither can a single wing (in ideology) government function in a diverse society such as ours. We thrive in diversity; but we seem to roll the dice every election cycle as to what we’ll get.
We have the right to vote November 4, and it behooves all of us to not only exercise that right, but to exercise it thoughtfully and carefully.

#940 – Dick Bernard: The 125th Birthday of North Dakota

October 1, 2014/0 Comments/in Family History, Minnesota, North Dakota, Politics /by dickbernard

NOTE TO SUBSCRIBERS: An earlier version of this post has been updated below,including more content, links and photographs. This post was picked up by Twin Cities on-line newspaper MinnPost on Oct. 1, and can be read here.
After publishing this blog, I received a note from the coordinator for North Dakota Studies at the State Historical Society of ND. Neil Howe noted “We provide print and online resources to teach North Dakota history, geography, and citizenship in the schools of ND. You may know that teaching North Dakota Studies in ND is required at grades 4, 8, and high school. We are one of only a few states with this requirement — and we take pride in that.
You may want to visit the North Dakota Studies website here. I think you may find lots of interesting information about ND.”
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November 2, 2014, is the 125th birthday of North Dakota – the 32nd state of the U.S. Today, October 1, 2014, is the 125th anniversary of the day North Dakotans ratified their new Constitution in 1889.
Happy Birthday!
(click to enlarge all photos)

North Dakota State Capitol as pictured in 1911 North Dakota Blue Book.

North Dakota is my home state. Many North Dakota towns and cities have earlier celebrated their 125th. Sykeston, where I graduated from high school in 1958, celebrated its 125th in 2008.
Some serendipity happenings cause me to give focus, this day, to the original Constitution of the State of North Dakota. (History of the North Dakota State Capitol buildings can be read here. The original building was built in 1883-84, burned down in 1930, and was replaced by the present skyscraper of the prairie in 1934.)
Most of the text and illustrations which follow come from the 1911 Blue Book of North Dakota, which I found this summer amongst the belongings at the LaMoure County farm where my mother grew up. In the books illustrations (below) you see evidence of pencil scrigglings. Most likely, they were made by my then-two year old mother, Esther: she was born in 1909, and by the time this book was at the farm home, she was probably at the age where a pencil and paper had some relationship together. (The final picture, at the end of this post, is of the first page of the book. Likely an Esther Busch original!)
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The cover of the “red, white and blue” Blue Book of North Dakota, 1911

The official story of the history of North Dakota, as told in 77 pages of the text of the 1911 ND Blue Book is accessible as follows:
1. The 1889 Federal Enabling Act leading the Constitution is here: ND Enabling Act 1889001 (13 pages)
2. The text of the 1889 Constitution of North Dakota is here: ND Constitution 1889002. (57 pages) At page xxviii is the vote by county for and against the Constitution.
(North Dakota’s Constitution, when completed, was over 200 handwritten pages, a fact I didn’t know till I was trying to locate a copy of it.)
3. The summary history of the state and Dakota Territory, its predecessor: ND TerrHist writ 1911 002 (7 pages) [See note at end of this blog].
North Dakota’s history, like all places, then to now, is complex.
For anyone interested there are a great many sources and observations interpreting North Dakota’s early history and the torturous course of its Constitution pre and post 1911. Between statehood in 1889 and 1911, when this book was published, there had been great changes in ND, with extremely rapid growth. It was doubtless an exciting time on the prairie; a time of transition.
Elwyn Robinson, author of the definitive history of North Dakota, gives this description of the beginnings of the ND Constitution Convention in 1889: ND Constit – Robinson001.
Complex as it was, it seems that the ND process was very civilized compared with the earlier Constitution deliberations leading to Minnesota statehood in 1858. Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, in the 2009 Minnesota Blue Book, has this account of the Minnesota Constitution Convention: MN Constitution Hist001
Of course Constitution history does not end with enactment. Re North Dakota, Dr. Jerome Tweton much later wrote an interesting commentary on a later effort to redo the oft amended original Constitution of North Dakota.
The rest of us.
Of course, such recountings as shared above, tend to overlook the ordinary human element – people like ourselves. The recounting is of power transactions, in the old days, virtually all made by educated white men, setting the ground rules for the society in which they lived.
In 1910, North Dakota had 577,000 or so population (today, approximately 700,000). That would mean 577,000 individual stories.
Here, very briefly, are snippets of four human stories, those of my grandparents.
The person who acquired and then saved the 1911 Blue Book was my grandfather Ferdinand W. Busch.
He and his wife, Grandma Rosa (Berning), came to the pioneer farm between Berlin and Grand Rapids from extreme southwest Wisconsin (a few miles from Dubuque IA). They married Feb. 28, 1905, and the next month came west to virgin prairie.
Grandpa Fred Busch seems always to have had an active interest in politics, and it is probably thanks to him that I now have this precious old book. (Rosa would have little of this political stuff: there were mouths to feed, after all. When Grandpa ran unsucessfully for County Auditor in 1924, my Aunt Mary once said, Grandma, now with the franchise, campaigned against him!)
Their farm was purchased from the father of Milton R. Young, long time ND U.S. Senator. Fred knew Milton well, personally. They are buried, literally, across the road from each other just outside of Berlin. My mother worked at one point for Milton and his wife at their farm on the edge of Berlin.
Fred became a Non-Partisan League advocate, and later in life especially liked Sen. Bill Langer.
Dad’s side of my family preceded ND statehood.
My grandmother Bernard, then Josephine Collette, was born eight years before statehood at St. Andrews, where the Park and Red Rivers come together in Walsh County ND. Her parents came to ND in 1878; several uncles and Aunts came west about the same time, just before the great land rush.
Her uncle, Samuel Collette, who migrated to the St. Paul MN area from Quebec in 1857, was the first family member to see North Dakota. He was part of the Minnesota Mounted Rangers in 1862-63, a soldier in the so-called Indian War, and likely was with that unit in 1863 when it reached what later became Bismarck. This was a few years before Interstate 94.
I don’t recall much talk of politics by Grandma or Grandpa, though I think Grandma had a Collette Cousin who was a ND State Senator for a long while.
In the reverential description of the ND flag in the book (see below), I found most interesting the many references to the Spanish-American War in the Philippines 1898-99.
Grandpa Busch, Mom’s Dad, would not, in 1911, have had any idea that his future brother-in-law, my Grandpa Bernard, Dad’s Dad, who came to Grafton from Quebec about 1894, was in at the beginning of that long war, spending an entire year in the Philippines, part of Co C, Grafton.
Where that ND flag was, there was Grandpa Bernard.
I have visited Manila, Pagsanjan and Paete, all mentioned in that description.
North Dakota was one of the earliest enrollees to support that war in the spring of 1898. Of course, the “Roughrider”, Teddy Roosevelt, had spent two important years in ND in the mid 1880s, living in the Badlands not far from todays Medora. In a way, by 1898, Theodore Roosevelt had become a North Dakotan.
Without knowing it, the two ND families were already “tied” together.
(Another book found at the Busch farm is one about the Spanish-American War written at the time of the war in the grandiose style of the time.)
Every family has their own stories. These are only five small snips.
And every state has its symbols.
Here are the 1911 descriptors of the Wild Prairie Rose, North Dakotas State Flower, and the North Dakota Flag: ND Flower Flag 1911 002. These are the only state symbols within the book.
There is no descriptor of the North Dakota Seal in the 1911 book. Here is a more current interpretation of that Seal.
(click to enlarge)

ND Flag, as presented in the 1911 North Dakota Blue Book. Scribbles likely compliments of then 2-year old Esther Busch.

ND State Flower, the prairie Wild Rose, as presented in 1911 ND Blue Book

Great Seal of North Dakota in 1911 ND Blue Book. Scribbles likely contributed by then 2-year old Esther Busch of Henrietta Township, rural Berlin ND.

Likely artiste, Esther Busch, in the 1911 North Dakota Blue Book.

Happy Birthday, North Dakota!
POSTNOTE: Esther Busch went on to Henrietta Township School #1 near Berlin ND, thence to St. John’s Academy in Jamestown, thence Valley City State Normal School. She became a North Dakota Public School elementary school teacher in the late 1920s, met her future husband Henry Bernard at Valley City State Normal School, and together they taught a total of 71 years in North Dakota Public Schools.
re ND TerrHist link (#3 above): At page four of the link you’ll find the population of ND by decades until 1910. Succinctly, the population grew by 75% from 1890 to 1900, thence 80% from 1900 to 1910 to a 1910 population of 577,000.
That more or less remained the population of North Dakota until the recent oil boom.
They say ND is now about 700,000; In the 1960 census, when I was a junior at Valley City State Teachers College, ND population was about 630,000. When I did the Busch family history some years ago I looked up the population of Berlin, which was platted in 1903 and incorporated in 1906. Berlins highest population ever was in 1910, 137 people. It was all downhill from there. The current population of Berlin, ND is about 35. Here’s how it looked about 1910: Berlin ND early pre-1910001
A small photo album.
click on all photos to enlarge them

Busch farm harvest time 1907,. Rosa Busch holds her daughter Lucina, Others in photo include Ferd, behind the grain shock; Rosa’s sister, Lena, and Ferds father Wilhelm, and young brother William Busch. It is unknown who was unloading the grain in background. Possibly, it was Ferds brother, Leonard, who also farmed for a time in ND.

Ferd and Rosa Busch with first child, Lucina, in yard of their farm home likely Fall 1907

Josephine, Henry, Henry Jr and Josephine Bernard, Grafton ND 1908

Esther and Lucina Busch, rural Berlin/Grand Rapids ND 1910

Henry Bernard (top left) and Josephine’s cousin Alfred Collette (lower right) ready to embark for Philippines from Presidio San Francisco summer 1898.

(If you enlarge Alfred Collette’s head (lower right) you can see that his hat is emblazoned with 1st North Dakota text.)

North Dakota State Capitol June 1958 photos by Henry Bernard.