#953 – Wayne: A bit of nostalgia remembering the early 1940s.

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This summer my friend, Kathy Garvey, gave me a photo and fascinating accompanying story, both of which speak for themselves and follow, below. I have purposely not edited Wayne’s words, as they are written spontaneously, and more interesting. “Dad” is Kathy’s Grandpa, and the other players are his wife and kids. Wayne writes extemporaneously the recollections about the family in the early 1940s. Shakopee is a southwest suburb of Minneapolis MN, on the Minnesota River. The other places mentioned are south suburban Minneapolis and St. Paul.
(click to enlarge)

1942, Shakopee MN

1942, Shakopee MN


“Thank you for the picture of Dad at our filling station at 139 Dakota Street in Shakopee in 1942 at the age of 68. I had never seen this picture. The pumps were not electrified. The customer stated how many gallons wanted and you used the hand pump to reach that level in the glass bowl, then gravity hosed it to the car. Plastic had not been invented and no metal quart cans of oil as aluminum was needed for building planes and tanks. You filled quart bottles from a drum as needed. At age 11 I waited on customers as well. Station was closed about a year later as it was a poor location and gas being rationed the average the average person only had stamps for three gallons per week. Margaret was at the Cargill shipyard and received extra stamps due to her vital work [nursing]. Cars of the day were difficult to start in cold weather so she had an extra battery installed under the hood of her 1939 Pontiac coupe.
In 1939 Dad’s legs were bothering after years of following a team of horses and a plow thru the fields so it was decided that Elmer and Irene would take over the farm at the time of their marriage and we would move to Shakopee to a house acquired thru a tax sale. Rita and I thought we were in heaven being only two blocks from St. Mary’s school, one block from the bakery and two blocks from downtown. There was no central plumbing or heat so Dad partitioned off part of the very large kitchen for a bathroom including a tub. After years of an outdoor toilet and Saturday night baths in a washtub behind the kitchen stove this was a real luxury. A furnace was ordered from Montgomery Ward in St. Paul and an installer came by train to put in and stayed with us for two days as he did not have a car. I should add that we were only two blocks from the first indoor movie that we had ever seen.
Farmers could not join the social security program in those days so we had no real source of income. We fixed up and painted a house acquired thru tax sale and rent from this helped. A few summers Dad worked for the State of Minnesota planting trees but he could not stand the hot weather. During the winter he liked to attend court trials and was always hopeful they would need a juror for the five dollars per day pay which could probably equate to eighty dollars today.
In 1941 he acquired a large stucco home in rundown condition which needed to be razed thru tax sale for twenty-five dollars. Rita and I spent many hours there stripping plaster and nails from the wall laths so they could be used in the new house on 139 Dakota Street. With the help of a retired carpenter for framing Dad did most of the building by himself. On the afternoon of December 7, 1941, he and I were working there when Rita hurried to tell us of the attack on Pearl Harbor. We moved to that house in 1942. Later he would build two other houses on speculation, one on East first street and another near the women’s reformatory.
During the war mother and other ladies would gather at the reformatory to cut sterile bed sheet into thin strips and roll them to be used treating the wounded soldiers in Europe. Also since we lived near the railroad tracks hoboes riding the trains would often come to the door asking to work for food. She gave them sandwiches and sent them on their way.
In the early days the Milwaukee railroad had a daily freight train with a passenger car on the end between Farmington, Lakeview, Prior Lake, Shakopee and Chaska, returning that afternoon. There was a siding in Credit River about one mile from our church. This would not happen today but at the time trucks to carry goods to the Twin Cities were not very reliable so farmers could use this siding to ship crops to market. Every fall Dad would contract to sell a load of grain, and each winter a load of cordwood. On the appointed day Mary, Margaret and Helen would go to the siding and flag the train down and instruct the trainmen as to placing an empty boxcar. Elmer would stand on the hill behind our house and listen for the whistle of the steam engine approaching the grade crossing. Then if he heard the engine starting up several minutes later he and Dad would hitch teams of horses to the already loaded wagons. The girls would wait at the siding and help load the boxcars which are huge in size and required many wagon loads to fill. Two days later they would again flag down the train to transport the car. Dad, Elmer and at times a hired hand would spend much of the winter cutting wood as there was no fieldwork at that time of the year.
Helen related that every second day mother would bake 13 loaves of bread and two tins of muffins. When a hog was butchered she would cook and can the meat in mason jars. The pork was put in huge crocks with a layer of salt between each.
I once asked Margaret to write some family history. She replied in part “we were so lucky to have such good, hardworking parents who did not smoke, drink, curse or gamble”. How true.”
Wayne, July 9, 2014

#952 – Dick Bernard: Some thoughts on President Obama

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Yesterday, President Obama had Speaker of the House John Boehner, Senator Mitch McConnell et al over for lunch. Everybody in that room knew what was going on, and what will continue. You don’t – you can’t – put aside six years of orchestrated hatred against the nations first black President, and “liberals”, and sincerely “make nice”. We the people apparently want a nation at war within itself, and we can expect two more years of being angry till the election of 2016, and regardless of who wins in 2016 we will see, daily, the difference between a positive philosophy of “win-win” versus the now dominant philosophy of “win-lose”.
We seem not to have voted for wholesome competition over ideas, thence compromise and rational decisions on civil law; we voted for civil war, amongst ourselves.
It seems a good time for me to review my own thoughts about our 44th President, Barack Obama.
I first “met” the future President at Minneapolis’ Target Center February 2, 2008. I stood in line for a long time along with a full house of others to see this new kid on the block. I was curious.
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Candidate Obama February 2, 2008, Minneapolis MN

Candidate Obama February 2, 2008, Minneapolis MN


Target Center Minneapolis February 2, 2008.

Target Center Minneapolis February 2, 2008.


I took the above photos that day. My friend, Norm, would probably agree these are “thousand word” photos.
It happened that four days later, February 6, 2008, Minnesota held its Precinct Caucuses.
I always attend these caucuses. My wife and I went.
Twice, following those caucuses, I wrote about the experience the evening of February 6, 2008. For the curious, at the end of this post are the entirety of those comments, written to my own mailing list back then.
Succinctly, “I cast my [straw poll] ballot [Feb. 6] for Hillary Clinton…[she] seems to have both the stamina and the backbone to endure the brutality of the campaign trail. This is some important evidence to me that she has what it takes to be chief executive of the United States, by far the most complex job on earth….”
Progressive friends were aghast at my choice: “how could you…?” It was an interesting on-line discussion for a few days. Only Obama deserved to win.
Ultimately, Hillary Clinton conceded the race; Barack Obama ran against John McCain, and the rest is history.
I wasn’t prepared for what happened next; though I made what turned out to be a prophetic statement the evening of February 6: “Now comes the hard
part: keeping people interested, engaged and committed. This continued engagement can be a real problem. A lot of people showed
up last night solely to vote for Clinton or Obama, and immediately left….”
It was extraordinarily disappointing to see the vitriol heaped on Obama from the moment of his election in November, 2008, and continuing to this day. I expected some of it, though most was completely over the top and truly bizarre.
But that was not as disappointing as watching Obama’s “base” largely dissolve, mostly, it seemed, based on “we elected you, now it’s your problem to solve all of ours; to bring us “Change we can believe in”. But don’t expect us to show up and do any lifting, much less heavy lifting.”
I had come from a career arena where the daily menu was problems that needed to be solved, and I knew that even on petty matters, differences of opinion require patience and persistence. Too many progressives made impossible demands, immediately: close Guantanamo now; get single payer health insurance now; end war today…. Of course, on the Republican side, the active campaign from the beginning was to assure in every possible way that the new President would fail.
He actually accomplished a huge amount of good, against enormous obstacles. But, who cares?
Additional words from myself are superfluous.
Now we are preparing for the last two years of the Obama Presidency. He won’t be running again, we all know that.
As a nation, we seemed to have chosen a fork in the national road way back after September 11, 2001, and it was not a healthy choice.
I’m only a small fish in a very big pond, but to the extent I can, I’m going to continue to work for a more positive America in full relationship with the World.
This is our country. This is our world.
Comments:
from Flo H Nov. 8: Truly prophetic. I, too, voted for Hillary, but didn’t seek further nomination to higher levels of supporting my position.
from Bruce F Nov 8: Too much is being made of last Tuesday’s results. It was a small turnout, even by midterm standards. The Republicans were playing on their home field. The number of Senate seats needed to be defended by the Democrats was a huge impediment for them. The next election will be on the Democrats home field, and the math looks worse for the GOP than the Democrats just experienced.
Neither side presented a cogent message that resonated. The people are not happy. With the unemployment numbers showing job growth and the GDP numbers showing economic growth, the people don’t feel it and think the recovery has pass over them.
That is a recipe for a populist message. It can be a right wing populist message or a left wing message. The message that best captures the fear & anxiety of the voters will be powerful. It can be a Teaparty message or a populist left message like Warren’s.
In the meantime, it won’t be pretty in Washington. The Republicans can’t do anything that the president won’t let them do. Even if the do away with the filibuster, which they will and I hope they do, they can’t override a veto.
As far as working together, the KeystonePL is central. The Republicans really want it, while Obama want’s comprehensive immigration reform and improvements in ACA. So, look for Keystone to get the go ahead and
environment protection regulations weakened for immigration reform an improved ACA.
from Lydia H Nov 9: You are certainly right that too many (mostly non-activist) people thought all they had to do was vote for Obama & he;d solve everything. No activist I know ever thought that. So, here were are 6 years later w/more war, Wall Street still sucking up wealth & evading prison, & our environment in more peril than ever. The ACA is giving some people access to health care (no small thing—my best friend had a cancer scare last spring & if not been connected to the MNSure I do’t even want to think about how it would have turned out. He got early early diagnosis & surgery & it’s looking very good for him). But the ACA isn’t lowering costs of health care. No matter what they say, insurance/Big Pharma are doing quite well.
Unemployment has gone down although wages remain as stagnant as ever.
Problem is way too many people think ALL they have to do is punch a button marked D or R every 2 or 4 years & that’s it. But, REAL democracy requires far more of us.
Thanks for continuing to remind us of that reality
On to 2016.
Dick Bernard
Heres’ what I said, way back when:
Dick Bernard in P&J #1566 February 6, 2008:
CAUCUSING:
I’ve attended precinct caucuses for years. Our particular caucus
location for the last several years has been a junior high school a 15
minute drive from me, just off I-94.
That’s 15 minutes on a normal day.
Tonight it took almost an hour to drive to the location, most of that
time spent in the last half mile jammed bumper to bumper on the freeway
and the exit ramp, and then another 15 minutes to walk to the school from
my car which I had to park on the shoulder of the road.
The time spent had everything to do with the precinct caucus
attendance, which was HUGE.
My caucus location was teeming with young people. The young guy who
serves me coffee most mornings at my local Caribou was there, volunteering
for Al Franken. It is nice to make occasional unexpected connections like
these.
I cast my ballot – for Hillary Clinton; registered to become a
delegate to the next level – an important step, as the next level is where
the state delegates are selected. We left early as Cathy needed to get
home for some phone calls. It was a long chilly walk back to the car,
then home.
Why my vote for Hillary? More on that in a later post.
(The presidential vote in Minnesota last night is simply a straw poll
of those who actually registered at the caucus. It reflects who showed
up. Nonetheless, it will be interesting to see the results.)
I got a sense, last night, that people in my area are wanting their
country back. This was a school full of serious looking people. I’ll
hope their commitment sustains itself, and in fact grows.
For myself, I’ll be proud to support whoever ends up as the nominees.
More on my impressions at the end of this post…
*
Some final thoughts from Dick: a friend stopped by at coffee shop this
morning, and said that 2100 were at our caucus location, compared with 700
two years ago. Vote was probably 2-1 for Obama at our location, even
heavier in his affluent part of town. Chatting nearby were an older guy
and a younger woman, both of whom I know a little, both apparently
actively Republican. They were deeply involved in fearing the evils of
socialized medicine and Hillary Clinton. So goes the debate.
As candidates so well know, there are two ‘peaks’ to attain: first, the
nomination of their party; second, the election by the people, hopefully
somewhat fairly through the process of ballots. For eons, organizers have
come to know a basic truth about campaigns: don’t peak too soon! If your
campaign reaches its high point six months out, you’ll lose as certainly
as if it peaks six months after the election. The careful strategists are
well aware of this dilemma. The Obama campaign is well aware of this
dilemma as well. Super Tuesday (a media creation more than a substantive
national primary) makes necessary aggressive and expensive campaigning by
all the candidates. But it is just a media creation. Now comes the hard
part: keeping people interested, engaged and committed.
This continued engagement can be a real problem. A lot of people showed
up last night solely to vote for Clinton or Obama, and immediately left.
A heap of us will gather (in my case) March 8, for a long, long, often
very boring day at our Senate District Convention where the hard process
of selecting delegates to the state convention begins. In turn, the state
convention will select the national delegates, and on the process goes.
We will work really hard on March 8, and listen to lots of people, and try
to make some kind of reasoned and reasonable decisions. The people who
came, voted and left, will have no appreciation of this part of the
process.
Hang in there.
Here’s the rest of the Presidents, with their age at time of election.
George Washington, 56; John Adams, 61; Thomas Jefferson, 57; James
Madison, 57; James Monroe, 58; John Quincy Adams, 57; Andrew Jackson, 51;
Martin Van Buren, 54; William Henry Harrison, 67 (MY AGE, but he lived
only 31 days in office – bad omen. Keep my day job); John Tyler, 50:
James Knox Polk, 49; Zachary Taylor, 64; Millard Fillmore, 50; Franklin
Pierce, 48; James Buchanan, 65; Abe Lincoln, 51; Andrew Johnson, 57; U.S.
Grant, 46; Rutherford B. Hayes, 54; James Garfield, 49; Chester A. Arthur,
52; Grover Cleveland, 47; Benjamin Harrison, 55; William McKinley, 53.
P&J 1568 February 8, 2008
Why I voted for Hillary:
This is one of mine I hope you’ll take a moment to read.
Pro or Con responses will go into a future mailbag. (There will be a ‘mailbag’ following this one, then I may give you a break for the weekend!)
Why did I vote for Hillary, and Why am I inclined to support her?
There are no simple answers to those questions, whether answered by me, or anyone else. It is a complex matter. But I can provide some clues, with some data I find significant:
1. No less an authority than archconservative William (Bill) Bennett pronounced on CNN yesterday afternoon (Feb 7), that while he had serious reservations about John McCain as the Republican nominee, he would back him because McCain had an American Conservative Union rating of 82, while Hillary Clinton had a rating of 9. (If those numbers are incorrect, it’s Bill Bennett or American Conservative Union who’s lying, not me! Here is where you can check. On this list, which ranks lawmakers performance through 2006, MN Senator Mark Dayton had a ranking of 11, and Norm Coleman a rating of 75. Obama’s ranking is 8. Most conservative: DeMint (SC) 98; most awfully liberal, Ted Kennedy of MA, 2).
2. The same afternoon of Feb 7, a letter came from a good friend, a Catholic Priest friend who’s now in El Paso TX saying he’s now “on board w/the Obama campaign. Clinton has never repented for her support of the [Iraq] war….” He was talking, I suppose, about the October, 2002, resolution on which she voted ‘aye’; and on which my own Senator, Paul Wellstone, wavered until almost the last second before voting ‘nay’ (I know the circumstances on the latter, since I was on the way to banner at Wellstone’s office that fateful October afternoon and on arrival there found nobody bannering. I learned after I got home that he had declared he would vote against the resolution. At the time, I was very new to the Peace movement, and nobody was keeping me in the loop about what was happening (they still don’t, too often!). Of course, that vote was strategized by the administration and Republican leadership to take place in very close proximity to the 2002 mid-term elections. It’s easy research to find out what happened that Nov.)
Clinton was in her second year in the U.S. Senate when that vote occurred, and representing her state of New York. Her vote apparently didn’t hurt her standing with her home state folks – her constituents…she was easily reelected in 2006.
If folks take time to recall, Bush’s approval ratings were still stratospheric then, and they were stratospheric because of his WAR rhetoric and planning, and the politically massaged aftermath of 9-11. It’s useful to think back to those times. Hillary Clinton’s constituency was and is in New York City and State, where the worst of 9-11 happened, and it’s hard to imagine any other vote from her at that time, however ill advised one might think it was in hindsight. I wouldn’t expect her to ‘repent’, either. (When I became a peacenik, October 2001 and the bombing of Afghanistan, 94% of Americans approved of the bombing. Talk about being in the minority.)
3. I have mentioned more than once that in my own assessment of the candidates stated positions, Kucinich clearly was most in synch with my own personal views (40), while Edwards, Clinton and Obama were quite positive and a virtual tie (29, 28, 28), with Huckabee and McCain almost tied far down the list (12, 11), and Romney almost a no-show (4). (In my listing, Mike Gravel came in at 29 also. Thompson, Hunter, Guiliani and Tancredo were at the end, with 3,2,2 and 1 respectively. [Link provided here no longer exists in 2014].
This assessment had lots of issues, and lots of position statements from all the candidates, not labeled by candidates, so I don’t know in which areas I was most in synch with Clinton or any candidate, but it was useful for me in trying to figure out the general positions of the potential candidates for the most complex and difficult job in the world.
**
Debate rages on this network and others about Clinton, and mostly it has been pretty negative towards her. It was an act almost like ‘coming out’ to mention that I was going to vote for Hillary on Tuesday! “What will they say?” I suspect I was/am not at all alone in the big camp of folks who think Hillary is okay, and her own person, too.
I haven’t and won’t rate Hillary based on her years as first lady; nor did I rate her based on Bill, though I admit to being puzzled why even Bill has been made out to be such a liability. Best as I recall, he was very popular with the American people even after the impeachment, and through the end of his term, and most people would take the ‘Bill days’ of the 90s in a minute over what we’ve endured in the last 7 years.
Clinton ended his term, as I recall, with still very high approval ratings. He still is popular here, and around the world.
But the notion has been planted (and accepted) that, somehow, that this is a bad couple, in almost any way someone wants to define ‘bad’, and this includes many assessments from the Left. So be it. Could the description be a ‘spun’ one? Are we witnessing how the Politics of Division and Character Assassination works, directly and/or subtlely? From BOTH poles of the ideological spectrum?
Hillary Clinton seems to have both the stamina and the backbone to endure the brutality of the campaign trail. This is some important evidence to me that she has what it takes to be chief executive of the United States, by far the most complex job on earth (if one takes time to be engaged in the complexity – Bush didn’t. “The Decider” decided and in the process we have become a country governed by a ruler not a President.) Even as first lady, Hillary was molded by and initiated into the vicious crucible of Washington politics with the Health Care reform dilemma early in Bill’s first term. She’s criticized for not achieving the goal; I rarely hear she (and Bill) complimented for trying….
Add to the complexity of governing a monstrosity like our democracy is, the almost certain extraordinarily difficult situations and circumstances that we are entering after this disastrous eight years, and I puzzle as to why Hillary or anyone for that matter would want to be President. FDR may prove to have had a cakewalk in comparison.
That Hillary Clinton is a woman has never caused me to wonder about her ability to lead. My career representing teachers (still basically a female profession), long ago rid me of the business of sex role stereotyping, if indeed, that ever was a serious issue for me.
As I prepare to click ‘send’ on this, I have one last thought, from overnight. Hillary (and the others) are cursed by the ‘Liberal’ label as if it is the mark of Satan himself. This has been one of the most successful anti-marketing campaigns in our history. I commented on ‘liberal’ at a disenchanted conservative’s dinner table a while back thusly: “I’m definitely a Liberal, but if you truly want Conservative government, where people carefully handle your money, and are Compassionate in the process, you’ll elect Liberal every time. We’re careful with our fellow citizens money.” Liberals in my experience are, by and large, careful with the dollar (sometimes ‘cheap’) because they’ve had to be; and they tend to be, I think, more truly compassionate and understanding of other points of view. There could be worse qualities. The best ‘Compassionate Conservatives’ are, really, Liberals. (I know plenty of truly Compassionate Conservative Republicans…these folks are, by their own admission, out of power even in their own party, and trying to figure out how to regain some of the deserved stature and respect they had in the past.
We’ll see what happens these next months. Keep talking.

#951 – Dick Bernard: The Days Ahead, the Aftermath of the 2014 Election

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Questions only you can answer: did you vote in the 2014 election? If not, why not? If you voted, did you vote for all the candidates on the ballot? How well did you know the candidates running for the offices?
It will be days before there is reasonably accurate data, but all appearances are that only about one-third of those who could potentially vote in 2014 actually went to the polls on Tuesday. When I googled “voter turnout 2014 election united states”, here’s the first link. It’s worth scrolling down to the state by state data.
Nationally one of three voted. In Minnesota, one of two.
Minnesota is traditionally a very high turnout state, with great effort made to make voting accessible to voters. But even here we didn’t vote. In the national link (above) only half of Minnesotans who could vote actually went to the polls; this was less than the 55% who went to the polls in 2010….
In my little corner of the world, parts of two St. Paul MN suburbs, about 60% of us who are registered to vote actually voted.
Unfortunately, collectively, everywhere, we are going to richly deserve what we’re going to get in the next 24 months.
Politics is totally about Power*. We are a two-party country, despite the wishes of those who’d like to have a parliamentary kind of state.
When I cast my ballot on Tuesday, I was voting for more than just my local representatives. In effect, I (and all of us) voted for the single persons who will wield power as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, and United States Senate Majority Leader; and for similar positions in each of our states.
If there is continued gridlock, it is what we demanded, by action, particularly by our inaction on Tuesday.
President Obama was not on any ballot on Tuesday. But he was made to be the major issue, a six year campaign by the Republicans to make it impossible for him to succeed, then to blame the President for the apparent failure.
History will clarify the Obama years and will, I think, be very kind to him. Later I will write my own impressions of his evolution, as I have watched it. That’s for later.
The U.S. will never be post-racial – we have too long and too sordid a history – but when it comes to the matter of race, the Obama years will be seen much like traversing the rapids in a seeming tranquil stream: upstream nobody notices the turbulence (racism just is); traveling through the rapids (change) is turbulent and dangerous and very frightening; succeeding the traverse changes one forever. As the so-called “greatest generation” passes on, they are being replaced by a much more tolerant multi-racial and culturally diverse society.
There will, of course, always be new rapids. But the eight year Obama administration will be as significant, if not even more so, than the Civil Rights years.
In this Democracy, our country is too large to have effective populist revolts between elections. The policies will be made by those safely in office. The ballot box is where change will have to be made. This is not to say that there can’t, or won’t, be effective actions here and there
We are in a winner-take-all time in U.S. history; there was a time not long ago when collaboration was more the rule. Not now. It will be all about who will win, and what.
I will do what I can, as I always try to do. You?
* – There will be endless opinions about what Tuesday will mean to our country. Here, here and here are samples. Here is another about the race-card and Obama.
Elections, especially in democracies, have consequences. We freely “pick our poison”.
Back in the 1920s, fearful and angry and desperate Germans slowly and democratically brought Adolf Hitler and the Nazis to power. It took a number of years to accomplish the dream of a “Thousand Year Reich”, but it happened in 1933…and lasted till destroyed 12 years later.
That’s how grandiosity works.
A quotation I actually spent considerable time ten or so years ago, seeking evidence that in fact it was true, is this one, by Hermann Goering, long time Nazi, Reichmarshall, and heir-apparent to Hitler. Th statement was made while imprisoned at Nuremberg after WWII. Goering was sentenced to death by hanging for war crimes, but committed suicide first. He was talking about how the Nazis succeeded, at least for awhile, but he could be talking about most anything, particularly today’s American politics, dominated by, let’s face it, pure propaganda….
Goering: “Why, of course the people don’t want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece?
Naturally, the common people don’t want war, neither in Russia, nor England, nor for that matter, Germany. That is understood, but after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simpler matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
Quoted in the book Nuremberg Diary, p. 278, Gustave Gilbert, Farrar, Straus & Co., 1947. Gilbert was psychologist assigned to the Nazi prisoners on trial at Nuremberg.
Everyone knows the rest of this story.

#950 – Dick Bernard: The 2014 Election sine die; 2016 ahead

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A few days ago a friend from college days sent me Bill O’Reilly’s U.S. Citizenship test. The admonishment: “Take this test. DO NOT CHEAT!!!!”. There are 25 questions. Passing is 15.
I follow directions. Like my friend, I got 24 right. Your turn.
Election night was not an easy one for someone like myself, self-described moderate, pragmatic, liberal Democrat who truly admires President Obama.
Living in Minnesota took a bit of the edge off, since Democrats did pretty well, though they lost their majority in the Minnesota House. Last night was no fun.
But, I’m not a short-term kind of person (“quitters never win”), so I awoke this morning, ready to learn from yesterdays experience and to go to work.
There will be endless analysis of what and why of November 4. I’ll keep mine short.
For the long, daily, version I always like the summary of daily happenings at Just Above Sunset, a retired guy blogging in Los Angeles. Here’s the overnight edition. About half way down he cuts to the chase.
Watching politics pretty carefully, as I have for many years, there is a repetitive theme to the Republican “pitch” especially in these perpetually angry Newt Gingrich and “Tea Party” years which began about 1994. The message is very heavy on fear, loathing and rugged individualism (never mind that only a tiny few of American individuals manage to grab the brass ring of individual victory, even temporarily.) But these stock messages sell pretty well.
It occurs to me that these are the easy routes we mostly like to take. But then these entail “no pain, no gain” or similar descriptions of taking risks and going to work to solve things.
It is simpler to be against, than to be for. To be for something, means you have to do the hard work to reach a goal. It’s more than just a single action.
In recent years, the Democrats and President Obama were punished mercilessly for “Obamacare”, which in the long run will be one of the finest accomplishments ever. They risked on other things as well. In Minnesota, they were harpooned for such needed actions as authorizing and funding a long-needed Senate Office building (aka “Taj Mahal”). Made no difference that the building was known to be needed for over 30 years, and got costlier every year, it took huge courage to pass it in any form at the legislature last year. They knew the punishment that would follow.
Remember President Johnson and his assorted civil rights initiatives back in the 1960s, when the south was mostly Democrat, and more racist than today’s Republicans to which most of those Dixiecrats all fled? It was at the signing for one of the Civil Rights Bills that Johnson said that his action would lose the south for the Democrats for a generation.
Or remember Medicare, 1965, which a large portion of the angry white Republican electorate now considers an entitlement, but seemingly cannot stand the idea of extending the idea to the rest of the population.
President Obama took the necessary risk in 2009; the Democrats who supported him knew the consequences.
Under the new regime in Washington, it will be all politics all the time between now and 2016.
The Republicans now do not have Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to kick around, since they control both chambers of the Congress, but neither are veto proof. The GOP has ridden the blaming horse all too long….
Start by taking Bill O’Reilly’s little quiz, and resolve this moment to get more involved in politics than you’ve ever been before.
from Bruce F, Nov. 5: I don’t think O’Reilly could pass this test.
The Republican message is fear based, but those hardworking blue collar people that vote for it are voting on the hope that their hard work will pay off. It’s subtle and complicated, and Democrats don’t get it.
There are myths at work with ingrained values attached to them. Those voting Republican are more value based voters than Democrats. As far as I can tell, voting is an emotional experience. The Republicans have learned that lesson well.
Take ObamaCare, as an example. It’s presented by Democrats as a universal Heath care that will provide better coverage, while lowering industry costs, insuring everyone regardless medical history. The supporters of the plan have many facts & attributes that should make it, politically, an easy sell. When voters are polled, they like the pieces of it.
The Republicans attack it as a big government freedom robber. Freedom from big government is a value by which people vote. Thus Obamacare is a political liability.
The Democrats could neutralize that freedom attack by appealing to the value of freedom rather than using a fact based approach. For my money, Obamacare increases freedom providing voters freedom from inadequate healthcare, freedom from potential bankruptcy that will help the blue-collar worker pick up their boot straps and become self-sufficient.
But the Democrats refuse to pander to values to win elections. For me it’s a bias that shows a lack of understanding of how the political mind works.
I read yesterday that Ralph Nader has called for Pelosi, Hoyer, and other top Democratic Party leadership to step down. I agree.
As a side note, you must agree that none of the major issues of our time were discussed by the two parties in this election.
As far as what happened in Minnesota, here is my take:
It could be worse…it could be Wisconsin.
Six years ago Franken won by a few hundred votes. Four years ago Dayton won by a razor thin margin. Last night they both won by substantial margins. MN still has just 3 Republican US Reps. The direction, even with the turn of the MN House, is toward a deeper blue.

#949 – Dick Bernard: One Day to Election Day, Tuesday November 4

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Other personal commentaries on 2014 election here.
What matters tomorrow, Tuesday November 4, is voter turnout. The people who show up and vote for one or the other of the two major parties on the ballot will make their choice for thousands of local, state and federal offices around the U.S.
If you haven’t voted already, vote Tuesday, and encourage others to vote, and vote well informed.

Personally, I’ll vote Democrat. Neither major party, nor any other party, meets the test of “perfect”. Having said that, however, the Democrat record continues to be far more in synch with the needs of the vast majority of ordinary people than the Republican.
Personal observations from the ground level:
I like to observe politics in “real time”, beyond the pundits, the polls, the projections as seen in ads, on TV, in newspaper. I like to hear actual people, not posing or precisely speaking someone’s party line.
Like Sunday morning:
At late morning coffee, a large table of men near me was starting to thin out, and one older guy was mentioning that he’d been an engineer for his whole career, and that there is really no longer much of a middle class in our country. He mentioned no raises to speak of in his last 20 years at his company. “The middle class is now more like the lower class”, he said. No party or candidate was mentioned. It did not need to be. The “last 20 years” was specific. No one challenged him. Ordinary middle class people know what the current problem is, personally, for particularly their children and grandchildren.
Mention was made of the vast and increasing gap between the wealthiest 1% and the rest.
Best I could tell, this was not a bunch of Democrats shooting the breeze. Quite the contrary, just a dozen or so old friends visiting on a pleasant Sunday morning.
A few hours earlier we had been at church taking down the Families Moving Forward “bedrooms” for local homeless families. This particular week, I was told, there had been three families spending overnight at our church, including about 10 children.
“All of the families have someone employed, but none of them can afford apartment rent” said Mike, the person in charge.
Nothing much more needs be said. We all know “working poor”. It is easy to not notice them, but there are far too many.
They are less likely to vote than others. They have other preoccupations, other concerns. That’s where people like ourselves come in, to help give voice to the voiceless.
And a few days earlier, I got a first-hand glimpse at priorities at the higher economic levels:
A week ago today, I was invited to attend the annual luncheon of a very large investment management company with many billions in its investment portfolio, a company whose name would be recognized by anyone in this area. There were perhaps 300 or so of us in a large room, cold sandwiches for lunch, there to listen to reports on how the economy was and would be, for the people at the tables.
The companies economist spoke first, and helpfully gave us a four page copy of his remarks, which can be read here: Invest Report Oct 27 ’14001. This was followed by an endless review of 37 pages of charts and graphs by a company executive.
The economists report is very interesting to read, even if you’re not into economics. Such reports are always speculative – hopefully “educated guesses” about the future.
The economist scarcely departed from his text. One time, he did the obligatory sanctification of Ronald Reagan’s slashing the marginal tax rates on the wealthy in the 1980s; and in another surprising aside mentioned a concern about the increasing gap between the wealthy and non-wealthy. I would guess my colleague guests were not in the truly upper crust – there are private meetings for the truly rich – but we were the aspirational class. The folks in that room had their own piles of resources.
Still, some sitting there would have noticed the references, as I did, and the lack of references: for instance, there was not a single word about President Obama or the dramatic turnaround in the American economy since his election in 2008 despite constant efforts to make the President appear to fail….
I would guess I was in a room full of people whose tendency is Republican, though I don’t know that. There certainly were no poor hanging around, unless one counts those serving tables.
The meeting also caused me to think back to two years ago, November 8, 2012, when an angry right winger sent me a article published in Forbes magazine a day or so after the 2012 election. Essentially, the writer, a venture capitalist, assures readers that the election of Obama will mean the end of the economic world as we know it…. Here’s exactly what he said,in Forbes magazine two years ago: Misery Loves Company.
Doubtless, others believed the narrative two years ago, and would not be inclined to believe the very different reality that exists in the U.S. this day before the 2014 election.
Despite their most fervent efforts, the Republicans have not managed to make a convincing case, even to their zealots, that the Democrats have destroyed America.
Quite the contrary.
VOTE with your eyes open tomorrow.

#948 – Dick Bernard: North Dakota's 125th Birthday; remembering a farm as part of that history

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Today, November 2, 2014, is the 125th anniversary of the admission of the State of North Dakota to the United States of America.
I previously wrote about the history of this event, and the relation of my Grandparents Busch farm to that history on October 1. You can read that here, with numerous links.
The genesis for todays post came early Friday morning, in the hall between the North Dakota Nursing Home where my Uncle lives; and the Assisted Living facility where he lived until a year ago. I was walking down this hall and saw this photograph on the wall. I had seen it before, but this time it spoke to me in a new and deeper way. It was my Uncles farm, and he is the last of nine members of the family who called it home. I “borrowed” the photo and brought it home so I could scan it for posterity. The photo was taken, I learned, in the winter of 1992, hung in the hallway by someone I don’t know. Below is a marked version of it.
(click to enlarge)

The Busch farm, Henrietta Township ND, winter of 1992.

The Busch farm, Henrietta Township ND, winter of 1992.


Every one of us have our own stories about places familiar to us. Recently I had occasion to revisit Eric Sevaried’s 1956 classic story in Colliers magazine: “You can go home again”, about the always real and imaginary relationship between place, our past and the present.
For Eric Sevaried, the place of his childhood was Velva ND. We lived in Karlsruhe, not far from Velva, in 1951-53, just three years before he came home again.
Memories.
Then there’s the Busch farm, above pictured:
Grandma and Grandpa Busch, Rosa Berning and Ferdinand Busch, ages 21 and 25, came to the little knoll, the farmstead for their little piece of heaven, as winter ended in 1905. North Dakota was bustling, not yet a teenager, 15 years old. Like a teen, it was growing fast, full of dreams and dilemmas, perhaps like todays western ND oil patch. The future was not yet known, the good times or the very bad, like the death of a child on the farm; or the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Theirs was virgin land, and the new house they soon built overlooked their surrounding acres. There was nary a tree in sight, in any direction.
To the northeast (upper right on the photo), about four miles distance down the hill in the James River Valley lay the older town of Grand Rapids. Within eyeshot, less than five miles to the southwest, was what would soon officially be the town of Berlin.
Grandpa’s Dad, my great-grandfather Wilhelm Busch, had purchased the farm for his son from the owner of the property, the father of later U.S. Senator Milton R. Young. Most likely they were steered to this land by Grandpa’s uncle, B. H. Busch of Dubuque, a budding successful land entrepreneur. They would be followed by other Buschs and Bernings, as Leonard, Lena, Christina, August. August and Christina Berning took up the neighboring farm to the SE about a year later, and farmed there for many years. Leonard and his wife came to Adrian for a few years; Lena married Art Parker, and before they returned to Dubuque, they were early caretakers at the Grand Rapids Park, the first residents of what we all know as the caretakers house.
The Busch house (marked “A” on the photo), initially was simply the standard two story prairie box. The kitchen was initially detached from the house on the west side; later added to the east side of the house; later an addition was built on the west side. In this house were born nine children; all but one lived to adulthood there. Rural telephone service came to this house in 1912, about the time Verena, the third child, was born in 1912. Ferdinand was right in the thick of things with Lakeview rural telephone from the beginning; Vincent did lots of work on rural telephone issues. Verena died of illness at 15, in 1927.
The Buschs, along with many others in the area, founded St. Johns Catholic Church in Berlin in 1915.
Vincent and Edith, brother and sister, never married, born 1925 and 1920 respectively, both lived on the farm until health issues led to a move to town in 2006.
Grandpa died in the old farm house, in 1967. Grandma was said to be the first person to die in what is now St. Rose Care Center in August, 1972. The torch was passed.
Another original building, which still survives at the farmstead, barely, is the granary labeled as “C” on the photo. The first barn was approximately at the letter “D”; another building, which I knew as the chicken coop, was later replaced by the metal shed labeled “G”. A new barn was built at “E” in 1916 for some unrecounted reason. In 1949, the roof blew off this barn and was replaced by the new hand-made roof, which the local Catholic Priest, Fr. Duda, himself an expert carpenter, declared wouldn’t last. That roof is what presently keeps the barn below it from collapsing. Early on, my Dad participated in the reconstruction; Uncle Vince did a huge amount of the work, including the shingling.
In 1957, Grandpa bought the old depot in Berlin and moved the freight house and the depot agents portion of the depot to the farm. They are F1 and F2 on the photo. F2 collapsed about 2006. F1 is at the end of its life.
In 1992, Vincent bought a new house, “B”, which they planted on what all of us descendants knew as the front lawn, a few feet from the old house, which remained there until we took it down in 2000. Most every gathering at the farm ended with a group picture on the same portion of lawn which is now occupied by the new house, presently being renovated.
There has been, now, 109 years of life on this farmstead, though at the moment no one lives on the property (soon to change). The farm is no more or less typical than any farm or town neighborhood anywhere. It is a place full of tradition and memory, especially for this grandson of the place.
There are endless memories in these few acres, as there are in every farmstead; in every block, in every town and city, everywhere.
There was Grandpa’s hired man, way back, who likely slept in the granary. One year, he didn’t come back, killed in WWI. George Busch was a naval officer in WWII; youngest brother Art, went in the Army at the end of the War; Vince stayed home to do the necessary farming. Music was a constant in the house, and probably elsewhere, all “homemade” music, sung and played by the inhabitants….
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.

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.


What are your memories, about your places?
Happy Birthday, North Dakota.
More about the Busch farm here.