August 2016 – Thoughts Towards a Better World

#1159 – Dick Bernard: Ruby Fitzgerald. Farewell to a gentle lady.

August 29, 2016/1 Comment/in Family History, Quietings /by dickbernard

The note announcing the death of Ruby Fitzgerald, age 95, began with a photo (below) and ended with a brief note “The tiny plaque pictured on the front of this card graced Ruby’s kitchen wall for most of her life.”
(click on picture to enlarge)

Saturday, I was fortunate to be in a room filled with people who all were privileged to know Ruby over the years. I think Ruby would have been very pleased. Here is the written story of Ruby Fitzgerald as presented by her family: Ruby Fitzgerald002.
My mother and Ruby were first cousins; actually double cousins: their respective Mom and Dads were brother and sister, and they grew up on adjoining farms in rural Berlin, North Dakota.
As happens, family life paths diverged, and because of geography, they only rarely saw each other, and we didn’t get to know Ruby.
Ruby and my Aunt Edithe, born two months apart, graduated from the same high school in the Berlin High School class of 1938. Their families and many others had weathered the very worst of the Great Depression together. Probably from that experience came the significance of Ruby’s plaque pictured in the death announcement.
Ruby was an honor student, and had a scholarship to Jamestown College, but there was no money to go to college. That is how the Great Depression was.
In 1993, for a Busch-Berning family history, Ruby wrote a very vivid descriptive story of her years on the North Dakota farm . You can read it here: Ruby Fitzgerald 1993001. Anyone of a certain age, who grew up in rural North Dakota, will quickly identify with her description of rural life.
I only saw the Fitzgeralds a few times, but the visits are remembered fondly. For some reason, way back, I drove the then-country Jamaca Avenue west of Stillwater to visit them at their small farm. Most likely, then, I was starting my search for the family history of the Busch and Berning families. Their’s was a warm, hospitable place.
By good fortune, in going through my Busch family pictures this summer, I came across a photo of Ruby and her twin sister Ruth taken about 1921.

Ruby and Ruth Berning ca 1921 at home.

I took the photo to Ruby at the Ramsey County Nursing Home on Father’s day weekend, and she filled in the details of a fact I had known for years, without knowing the details. She was obviously moved by the photo.
She said that Ruth, her sister, had died at age 2 1/2 of whooping cough, most likely at the rural Cuba City WI farm home of her mother, Christina’s, parents, Wilhelm and Christina Busch. (After 13 years in North Dakota, the family went back home for the birth of the twins; thence they stayed in Wisconsin or Dubuque for another thirteen years before returning to the North Dakota farm, which they had rented out. The plant in which Ruth’s Dad worked had closed, and as I heard another family member say, at least on the farm they could have a garden, and eat. That is how it was.)
Three weeks after she saw the photo, Ruby died.
We all have our stories.
Ruby lives on through a wonderful family, and great memories.
I’m honored I could be present on Saturday. Ruby is at peace, and our world is the better for her having been with us.

Chritina Berning 1939

August Berning 1941

The Berning girls 1977. (There were two boys, August and Melvin, plus two young children, a boy and girl, who died very young.)

Ruby is 4th from left in the photo.

#1158 – The "Swift-boating" of Hillary Clinton: the e-mails and Clinton Global Initiative and whatever else is next….

August 26, 2016/0 Comments/in Media, Politics /by dickbernard

An 1879 Essay about Running for President by Mark Twain: here
Many days when I walk I wear a perfectly good old t-shirt that goes back to the summer of 2004.
(click to enlarge)

It was the year John Kerry (now U.S. Secretary of State) ran for President against George W. Bush. And it was the same year that the purveyors of politics of personal destruction unleashed the Swiftboat ads, turning one of Kerry’s chief strengths (Vietnam war hero, also Vietnam war protestor) into a weakness.
The sliming of a very decent man worked….
Karl Rove was the innovator of this strategy. While Swiftboat was probably not Rove’s personal doing, at least not so far as we knew, or directly, it was basically direct application of that innovative smear, put into play by others, and funded by big money which paid for the advertising.
Swiftboating worked then, and it is in play now, big time: take Hillary Clinton’s major strengths, such as political and diplomatic experience, and her demonstrated competence, and the Clinton Foundation that does a great deal of good, and turn them into negatives by cherry picking fragmentary “facts”, or even making facts up, then churning, and churning and churning.
1. The Clinton Global Initiative “scandal” is one of those breathless non-events. Check it out before being critical. (I notice, in searching for the link, that the Trump campaign has probably purchased first billing in the search engine to try to “trump” Clinton Global Initiative….)
So it goes. You can find Trumps link on your own, if you wish.
(While you’re looking, check into another great former Presidents initiative: the Carter Center.
Clinton and Carter were Presidents who chose to do good not only in office, but after they left office.)
2. The e-mail non-scandals (that’s what they are) will fade into the background, doubtless morphing into new sensational charges about other things…this has been the modus operandi against the Clintons for the entire time they’ve been in elected office, from Arkansas forward. There has been relentless smearing of them for years, all the while, the Clintons remain among our most admired people.
(The e-mail thing is something I relate to, since I do many e-mails. Personally, I have 32,528 “sent” messages saved on my computer. These go back to October 9, 2010, nearly 6 years ago, when I bought this computer; and there are many other archived messages which go back much longer.)
It seems insane to keep these old e-mails, but occasionally they come in handy, most recently at this blogspace, recalling Feb. 2008, Hillary Clinton 2008001, when I first wrote about why I was supporting Hillary Clinton for President (my personal endorsement continues.)
I muse about what would happen to me if some enemy felt a need to grab my e-mails, mine them for whatever data could be found, and then use bits and pieces of the e-mails to indict me for some sinister or unseemly deed. Would it be easy to find material within those 32,528? I’d think so. All you need to do is find a sentence, somewhere in there, a subject line even, and then milk the daylights out of it.
Could I defend myself? First, would I even remember whatever the e-mail was about? Hardly.
But, that’s how this dirty game is played.
The only antidote is to refuse to be sucked into this conversation. The Clinton folks know how to deal with this. I have a great deal of confidence in them.
Years ago when an organization I was part of was forced into a corner by attack after attack by the opposition, we finally figured out that there was not a thing we could do: a response to one attack was answered by another attack about something else.
Our troubles ended when we went on the offensive.
The times and circumstances were different than now, but not much.
I have confidence.
Back to 2004 John Kerry did alright after losing his run for President. George W. Bush got his second term from 2005-2009, and life went on.
After Hillary Clinton‘s honorable stint as Secretary of State, John Kerry was appointed, and he’s doing a great job, best I can tell.
The Republicans have been brutal in their attacks on their former Senate colleague, and I think the main reason is that she is extraordinarily competent and well prepared for the most demanding office in the world.
They know she is, but they cannot admit it.
And all of us are stuck with Donald Trump, whose campaign is so untruthful it’s not safe to believe anything that he says….
It’s not long to the 2016 election. Vote and vote very well informed.
POSTNOTE: REMEMBERING A CAMPAIGN OPPORTUNITY WITH THE KERRY CAMPAIGN.
August 25 and 26, 2004, I had a once in a lifetime opportunity to actually participate in ‘boots on the ground’ in the John Kerry campaign.
A small album can be viewed here: Kerry Mpls 8-25-2004001
Along with John Fitzsimons, a teacher in Anoka-Hennepin School District, I was assigned to a truck whose role was to carry press gear to the downtown Hilton Hotel when Mr. Kerry came to town for a campaign stop. It wasn’t flashy duty, and there was a lot of hurry up and far more waiting, but it really did give a unique view into the reality of campaigning for President.
My recollection is that we showed up for duty early in the day at the Executive Airport section of the Twin Cities airport. You don’t just show up for this kind of duty. Security is a concern.
We had earlier volunteered as part of Veterans for Kerry and were thoroughly vetted.
The photos show the nature of our duty: in the afternoon we loaded up the Press equipment that had come in with candidate Kerry, and joined the motorcade to downtown Minneapolis.
The next day we reversed the drill, and at the airport in the afternoon all of us had a chance to “press the flesh” with Mr. Kerry before he re-planed and left for his next stop.
Our task was very mundane, but as I think back on it, it was one of many unseen essential duties.
Apparently I wasn’t fired.
October 26, 2004, I was back on duty, driving some press people in the motorcade of John Edwards, vice-presidential candidate, to a morning event at the University of Minnesota.
The drill was the same as before.
Here, we drivers had an opportunity for a group photo, and I indulged myself in a “selfie” at some point in the morning.
Both candidates were most gracious.
Essentially three full days of work for myself and the others; and the candidates got a few column inches in the press, and a few seconds on the TV news.

Drivers for Edwards motorcade Oct. 26, 2004. Dick Bernard 2nd from right

Dick Bernard selfie, October 26, 2004

#1157 – Dick Bernard: Two Books Well Worth a Read: Shawn Otto’s "The War on Science"; and Lois Phillips Hudson’s "Unrestorable Habitat"

August 21, 2016/0 Comments/in Community, Education, Environment, History, Media, Peace & Justice, Technology /by dickbernard

Back in January a mysterious e-mail appeared in my in-box from someone named Cynthia. She had googled the name Lois Phillips Hudson to see if anything would come up, and found me. More on Mrs. Hudson’s book, “Unrestorable Habitat“, “below the fold”…
(click to enlarge photos)

A few months later came an invitation to hear Shawn Lawrence Otto read from his new book, “The War On Science“.
I know of Shawn’s past work, always first rate, and I bought the book, and it made my summer vacation book list.
I read, and learned a great deal from, both books.
They are, on the one hand, very different; but on the other, very similar. One is by an old lady written when she was my age range. Mrs. Hudson, is a retired college professor, quite obviously grieving the loss of her daughter to illness. She writes about the deep conflict she sees between today’s natural world and technology, compared with her youthful days in the midst of the worst of the Great Depression and World War II which followed.
(The retired college professor died before she finished her book, so one has to speculate on what her ending would be, but that actually contributes to the richness of her passionate expression of feelings on her past and present, and our future.)
The other book is by an author who painstakingly and expertly documents not only the very real “war on science”, but on other areas susceptible to manipulation of public opinion. Shawn Otto expertly reviews the problem, and then devotes much of the meat of the book to ways towards solutions.
SHAWN OTTO’S “THE WAR ON SCIENCE”
I highly recommend “The War on Science” to anyone with even a tiny bit of interest in topics like science, marketing, politics, and the incessant manipulation of personal and public opinion (propaganda) in our own country. Get to know the name “Edward Bernays”…. He enters the story by name at page 257.
You don’t need to be a scientist to understand the book, which is a very interesting history of science and its not always consistent position of esteem in our society (thus “war”); in addition, The War on Science is an equally interesting history of propaganda as it has been used in America especially related to marketing of products and ideas going back as far as WWI.
There is so much interesting and well argued information in the book that I would do a disservice by simply doing a once over in a review.
You need to read the book.
Best to take a look yourself. There are many formal reviews of the book at Amazon.com. One of them is mine.
You will see the book is being very well received.
Personally, I found “The War On Science” to be unusual in a couple of respects:
1. It nicks most everyone, including scientists, who get complacent and think they have found and can sit righteously on their own truth, as they define the term “Truth”. The book is heavily footnoted: 59 pages of sources.
2. Most importantly, fully 87 pages of the book discuss ideas for how individuals and groups in our society can move toward solutions to what seem intractable problems.
The War On Science is an excellent basis for book club discussion, as is Lois Phillips Hudson’s Unrestorable Habitat (following). Give both a serious look.

LOIS PHILLIPS HUDSON AND UNRESTORABLE HABITAT (continued)
A few days ago I was at a nearby park, completing “The War on Science“.
This day my phone rang, and on the line was long-time friend Nancy, from Hibbing, calling to comment on Unrestorable Habitat which I had sent her some months earlier and she had set aside and was just getting around to reading.
She had set it aside, but was finding it to be a marvelous book, a strong compliment coming from a retired teacher of English.
Unrestorable Habitat is one elderly woman’s reflections about her life, a certain huge business in her hometown of Redmond WA, some local fish, the loss of ability to imagine, and really, about all of us, everywhere in the so-called “developed world”.
Hudson’s book centers on an issue much on her mind as she grew older: the conflict she saw between salmon and big business in her town with lots of looks back at remembered pieces of richness flowing from her own very real hardships as a farm daughter during the worst of the Great Depression in North Dakota, then in Washington state, and forward into WWII in Washington. (She graduated from Redmond WA high school in 1945.)
Hudson died before she completed her book, but there is far more than sufficient “meat on the bones” to be published exactly as left by her: her opinions about post-9-11-01 contemporary U.S. society.
*
Some years back, I had blogged several times about aspects of Hudson’s 1962 well known book, “Bones of Plenty“, written about the worst of the Great Depression in rural North Dakota, and that is what Cynthia Anthony found in her random internet search. Cynthia, this mystery lady from New York, had become archivist for Mrs. Hudson’s papers, and asked permission to link my posts, “numbers 490, 495, and 565, which reference Lois Phillips Hudson” to her Lois Phillips Hudson Project, a website dedicated to preserving Ms Hudson’s rich but now basically unknown legacy.
It was Nancy who had earlier called my attention to “Bones of Plenty“; and now I was the one who had called Nancy’s attention to “Unrestorable Habitat“.
(Nancy had Mrs. Hudson as a teacher at North Dakota State University 50 years ago, and had vivid memories of her. She was a great teacher, Nancy said. She mentioned one quote by Hudson – at page 24 – that particularly caught her attention: “As..the mother of two daughters and the daughter of a father who frequently assured me that the brightest woman could never be as bright as your average man….” Unrestorable Habitat is peppered with such reflections.)
Once into Unrestorable Habitat, she found the book very interesting and thought-provoking.
Unrestorable Habitat so caught my attention that I purchased and distributed 100 copies, starting about 100 days ago.
Nancy was one of the recipients.
Here is the letter I enclosed with each book: Unrestorable Habitat
*
Let me leave it at that. “Unrestorable Habitat” is worth your time, as is “The War On Science“. Each can encourage you to “Do Something”.
The two books complement each other.
I hope you “take the bait”.

August 21, 2016

POSTNOTE:
1. Some readers might say, about “The War on Science“, that I don’t know enough about science to learn.
Not at all true. In my own review of the book (it’s probably the 22nd or so, link above) I acknowledge that I had virtually no science education in the tiny schools I attended growing up. My opportunities to know science were basically ad hoc, like watching Sputnik blink in the North Dakota night sky in 1957, or getting the Salk Vaccine not too long before. “The War On Science” is more than just a primer, but written to an audience who knows nothing about science. It is a learning tool in itself.
2. In the solutions section of “The War on Science“, Shawn Otto has a section entitled “Battle Plan 1: Do Something” (p. 371).
In her own way, Mrs. Hudson in Unrestorable Habitat was (I think) trying to begin a conversation: where can or should the new ways fit with the old, and complement, rather than compete with, each other? She wrote at least some of her draft on a laptop in a coffee shop, so what some might perceive as a rant against technology, at least part of her text was simplified because of the very technology she railed against.
There is room for conversation. She was Doing Something.
Earlier today I was at Mass at Basilica of St. Mary, and afterwards noted again the three trash containers downstairs (photo above).
This experiment goes back a couple of years, when my friend Donna and her committee got a small grant to get recyclable containers for use in the coffee area. They were Doing Something.
The experiment has never worked as it was supposed to. If one looks in the bins, there are admixtures of items, despite the verbiage on the containers. One can say it failed.
But I don’t agree. Who knows, among the hundreds of us who visit that area each Sunday, there is someone who gets an idea for use back home, maybe if only in their own home? Great ideas start with experiments that seem to fail. But to start them, someone has to “Do Something”.

#1156 – Changing the Political Conversation: Two Remarkable Events.

August 18, 2016/0 Comments/in Minnesota, Politics, Quietings /by dickbernard

Voter Registration Rules by State: here. Very useful handy guide. Share.
An appeal for a more civil political conversation from the Benedictines in Duluth MN: here. Special thanks to Molly.

Three generations at a political picnic, August 15, 2016

Monday’s celebration of Minnesota former Gov. Wendy Anderson‘s life was both uplifting and emotional – I attended…and I’m a person who met him only twice, and then briefly, well into the late autumn of his life. (My personal comments on the Memorial are here.)
His greatest days in the Minnesota legislature were in the early 1970s, when “people disagreed and worked together anyway” in the words of one of the speakers. This was a time when the adversaries staked out their positions, but often actually liked and respected each other, and figured out a way to negotiate to resolution of issues, even if, as Governor Mark Dayton marvelled, it took a near half year Special Session, back then, to get to “yes”.
Todays epidemic of the politics of personal destruction of the enemy other existed, I’m sure, but the combat then was child’s play compared to now.
*
But I noticed something else, Monday, since immediately after the Memorial Service, I left to go to a DFL Senate District 53 event (my home District).
By and large the crowd in the Church was of my demographic, “old white guys”, who had been through the political wars together. You probably couldn’t tell friend from adversary there: lots of handshaking, reminiscing…. Most well-dressed for the occasion, some UofM or Hillcrest neighborhood hockey alums, wearing the jersey for one of their own.
The pews were filled with the face of 1970s Minnesota, when politics was largely for successful white men who had the time and the resources to do public service. One of these, long deceased, was my best political friend: Gov. Elmer L. Andersen, a lifelong conservative, a wealthy businessman, but one who was an amazingly progressive man, largely due to having been orphaned at an early age.
He understood hardship from the ground up, and the need for civilly working together.
But my guess is that it was the rare female or ethnic minority face making government policy those long ago years. As Governor Dayton said in his remarks, among his other assets, Wendell Anderson, very proud of his Swedish ancestry, had “son” as the last three letters of his name – very, very helpful in a state like ours.
*
Back in Woodbury, there was a new “face” I saw at the DFL Senate District 53 picnic.
I took snapshots as I usually do, and two of these catch the general lay of the land better than the others (below, and leading this post).
(click to enlarge)

August 15, 2016 Mn Senate District 53 picnic.

At left is U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, (squinting into a very bright sun); next to her, State Rep. JoAnn Ward, completing her second term, with a passion for returning civil discourse to the practice of politics; talking to her, State Senator Susan Kent, completing her first four year term, taking a leadership role on some tough issues at the legislature. Finally, walking in from the right, U.S. Congressperson Betty McCollum, in her 8th term in Congress representing the St. Paul and east suburban area.
At the same event, but not in the photo, was Alberder Gillespie, long time resident and an impressive leader who’s far more than paid her dues, now running for her first time State Representative in the east side of the Senate District.
Some of these candidates have women opponents; some men.
*
There is a very different look to politics these days, in my suburban district, and I’m very glad for that.
There are the young people who attended; and those representing other ethnic groups and religions, leaders among them, who were there. All of these are welcome players in our political conversation.
*
One might understand that some of my cohort (older white men) take exception to the change we are seeing; some struggle against it. Commanders like to stay in command.
But this is a new reality. We won’t be going back to how it was in the “good old days”, where “good old boys” ran the club. Those days have ended. We’re all more and more equally part of the group.
Personally, I am delighted at the true benefit/gift/grace of a more diverse representation in our government at all levels.
We are far from perfection, granted, but as dysfunctional as the process of seeking leaders seems to be at this moment in our history, what is happening now is normal when deep change is genuinely occurring.
We are making significant progress, which I will do everything I can to help continue.
We all need to get deeply involved.
Now. (Early voting begins in some places within the next month.)

#1155 – Governor Wendell R. Anderson

August 15, 2016/0 Comments/in Links /by dickbernard

This afternoon, Monday Aug. 15, at 2 p.m., is the Memorial Service for “Wendy” Anderson at Mt. Olivet Lutheran Church, 5025 Knox Ave S. (50th and Knox) in south Minneapolis. His obituary can be read here.

Honor Guard at Mt. Olivet prior to the Memorial Service for Wendell Anderson.

I only met Gov. Anderson twice, both in 2008-09, the second at the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Festival at Augsburg College (below).
(click to enlarge photos)

Governor Wendell Anderson, 2nd from right, and Lynn Elling, center, at Nobel Peace Prize Festival Augsburg College, March 5, 2009. Photo by Melvin Giles

Among all of his accomplishments, I consider the greatest to have been not only declaring the State of Minnesota to be a World Citizenship state in 1971, signed by a who’s who of Minnesota civic and political leaders, but to put the simple resolution into action, including a movie featuring singer John Denver and featuring many of those same leaders in 1972.
(There is not a word in the obituary about this accomplishment. It is as if it has been officially disappeared from the collective consciousness.)
You can view the Minnesota Declaration of World Citizenship below, and the 30 minute movie, Man’s Next Giant Leap (which includes Wendy Anderson, here.

Minnesota Declaration of World Citizenship March, 1971. photo courtesy of Bonnie Fournier, Smooch Project

Coincidentally, later this week is an event. Diplomacy Begins Here, which directly relates to the Governor’s actions in the early 1970s. You can read about it here.
One can only wonder what might have happened had the 1971 Minnesota (and 1968 Minneapolis and Hennepin County) initiative for World Citizenship been kept alive, rather than relegated to the dust bin of Minnesota history….

March 5, 2009, Wendell Anderson, Lynn and Donna Ellingat the Nobel Peace Prize Festival at Augsburg Collete.

Prof Richard Alley (see next para) and Ron Lattin, at right, visit with Gov. Anderson and Lynn Elling Mar 5, 2009

Richard Alley(see above photo), of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, one of the co-recipients of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, speaks to students at the Peace Prize Festival here.

Cover of Program for Memorial Service, August 15, 2016

Here is another Minnesota Governor, Elmer L. Andersen, speaking about the raising of the United Nations flag as a companion to Minnesota and U.S. flags at to-be Hennepin County Plaza on May 1, 1968. Elmer Andersen I Trust..001 Gov. Andersen considered this to be one of the most important speeches he ever delivered.
POSTNOTE:
Directly related, here: The UN Flag, 1968-2012, at Hennepin County Govt Center Plaza. This also links to another extensive post at March 27, 2013.

#1154 – Dick Bernard: The Danger of Dog Whistle Politics.

August 10, 2016/0 Comments/in Links /by dickbernard

Yesterday, Donald Trump made a statement about the Second Amendment and Hillary Clinton. Just Above Sunset summarizes reporting on the event here.
This morning my friend, Joyce, sent the link to a New York Times column by Thomas Friedman remembering the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin Nov. 4, 1995, and drawing parallels to the Trump comment. You can read that column here. Her note was succinct: “I had forgotten about the role Netanyahu played in the Rabin assassination” by a right-wing Israeli, Yigal Amir.
Here is my response to Joyce:
I have two memories.
Nov. 4, 1995, – it was a Saturday afternoon – I was heading to Mass at St. Peter Claver in St. Paul, and heard on Minnesota Public Radio that Rabin had just been assassinated (there is an eight hour time difference between St. Paul and Jerusalem). When I got to Church I went to the front and told the Pastor the news right before Mass began. He was shocked, of course, and made the announcement to those in the Church, none of whom had heard the same news. They, too, were shocked. It was unbelievable.
Two months later, I was with a group on a trip to Israel – a trip planned long before Nov. 4. When we got to Jerusalem, one of our first stops was at the still fresh grave of Rabin. I will never forget that visit.
*
I was thinking in the car this morning about the awful reality of statements like Trump made yesterday, however flip they seem to be or however they are spun, later.
We seem to yawn at them. They matter, a lot.
It doesn’t take a genius to know that there are people who will answer any dog whistle. Let’s say, there’s just one nutcase in a million who takes on his or her mission to rid the world of the evildoer*. In the United States, that would be 325 people (among our 325,000,000) who might be tempted to answer the call, and sacrifice themselves to take out Hillary Clinton.
About 6 of these are in Minnesota….
(The ratio would hold the same for ISIS call for their own idiot fringe to sacrifice themselves taking out infidels….)
This is not an abstract thing.
Scary.
Of course, the Republican power structure, which has aided and abetted Trump’s behavior, and this year chose willingly to ride the wild horse which is the Trump base, are now running like rats jumping off a sinking ship. But even now they cannot shed their main basic anti-Clinton talking points about how Hillary is a “liar” and “corrupt”, while offering no proof whatsoever of any charge.
Of course, no proof for charges such as “liar” or “corrupt” are ever required. The charge alone is a great plenty.
The devil-dance now being witnessed would be humorous, were it not so tragic. Donald J. Trump and his followers was a deliberate creation…those who paved his path just thought they could control the end game, and they can’t.
(Unfortunately, even some of my left-wing friends fall for the same, on their own issues. I see their e-mails too. Their arguments are simply on different issues.)
Yesterday it was the Second Amendment enforcers; today and tomorrow it will be something else.
Caveat emptor, voters. Buyer beware.
* – Of course, my ratio is just a guesstimate. But I’m guessing I’m not far off. Whatever the more accurate number, as we know so very well, there are crazy people out and about who are obsessed about this or that. Give them an excuse, and access to a weapon and the target, and there is almost 100% assurance of trouble.
COMMENTS:
from Joe, August 10: Excellent essay. Thanks.
from Louise: Thanks, Dick. That is a powerful column by Thomas Friedman.
from Flo: Can I plagiarize your outsidethewalls? Just kidding, but it’s so tempting to get a letter like yours in our local paper!
from Jeff August 11: Lest we forget 5000 copies of this were passed out in Dallas in November 1963 in the days before JFK’s assassination:

The Warren report concluded Oswald had planned the assassination and there was no involvement from
The John Birchers responsible for the flyers. Still. Dangerous waters. Or as someone I was listening to on radio said, you have talking like this, emotional responses and the next thing you know you get “Pinochet”.
from SAK:Thanks for #1154 – I happen to have been thinking along the same lines. The problem of incitement is amplified by the internet & social media I suppose. Assassinations can change the course of history – usually for the worse – President Lincoln, President Kennedy, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Prime Minister Rabin . . .
You might be interested in this BBC programme on the US’ fourteenth amendment?
For what it’s worth, not much, I think Donald Trump is finished but I am not even sure the race will be solely between the 2 obvious candidates.
Dick August 11: This mornings Just Above Sunset continues yesterdays story here. I included my own comment at the end of the post, as follows: The Trump movement is and has always been dangerous. The only thing I muse about, however, is exactly how such a ‘revolution’ would look if it actually began? Who’d be the ‘General’? What I think would happen is, really, already happening: occasional unhinged psychopaths out and about to take down as many people as they can, in some obscure place: a bar in Orlando, a boulevard in Nice, Roseburg…. Trump has taken it to a new level with the implication that someone should take out the President, if it happens to be other than Trump. It is a scary time. Ironically, the world is basically safer at this moment than it has been in a very long time; while all of us feel terrorized, since we think we could be in the target for the next random act of terror. Yes, the Republicans did bring all of this upon themselves, and thus on all of us.

#1153 – Dick Bernard: The Minnesota Primary Election

August 9, 2016/0 Comments/in Links /by dickbernard

Today is Minnesota’s Primary election.
If Minnesota is your home state, and you’re an eligible voter, take the time to vote, and vote well informed, and pass the word.
The information you need is easily accessible: here.
Most places you’ll see that this is a “boring election”. There are few races.
But boring elections are the places where mischief can be made. Since few people vote, they are exploitable by stealth candidates.
There is a single statewide race in Minnesota, and that is for a Supreme Court Justice, one incumbent, two challengers. Supreme Court Justice, Natalie Hudson is incumbent.
More important info on the Supreme Court Race here: (from MinnPost).
(The more or less general rule I follow is that there is an incumbent, and that incumbent has escaped justifiable public criticism, as is usually the case for judges, the incumbent is probably the best choice, as he/she has been vetted for the position by peers in the legal profession, and his/her performance is closely watched. The judiciary should be as independent of partisan meddling as it is possible to be.)
Be wary of voting for someone you know nothing about. Ask somebody you trust for information. At least assess what they stand for.
See you at the polls.
Likely there will be no line!
Take the time today to make a list of every government official who is elected to represent you.
This is far longer than simply President of the United States.
And these Senators and Congressperson, and State Legislators and Constitutional officers and Mayors and Council persons and County Commissioners and Sheriffs and on and on and on are very important offices.
Make sure you know who they are, and how you can contact them. These days, all of them likely have an easily accessible internet presence, not to mention address and phone number….
We, the people ARE the government that we get, and thus deserve.
The next election is Tuesday, November 8. Get on the Court!

#1152 – Dick Bernard: The Newspaper; Government by Twitter

August 3, 2016/0 Comments/in Community, Education, Family History, History, Media, North Dakota, Politics, Quebec/French-Canadians, Technology /by dickbernard

Those interested in why I very strongly support Hillary Clinton for President can read my post from Sunday here. The post includes several comments pro and con as well.
Personally, I always find the perspectives of Just Above Sunset informative. The latest is here.
(click on all photos to enlarge)

The Packing Crate, June 7, 2015

Monday evening came one of those far too infrequent “faceoffs” (as Dad would say) with my cousin and her husband from Winnipeg. We had a too-short but animated visit over dinner in Edina, and covered lots of bases, a small part of which touched U.S. politics, which is a natural point of interest (and concern) for Canadians, who share thousands of miles of border with us.
My relatives, who grew up in the border area just north of the Minnesota/North Dakota border, still speak their native French as first language. At the same time, they are equally fluent in English, and have been dual citizens of the U.S. and Canada for years.
The conversation drifted to Ovila, my Dad’s first cousin, and my cousins father, born in the early 1900s.
How did Ovila learn English in the days before television, living on a farm in a section of Manitoba whose first language has always been French?
The answer to this question is complex, but as I recall, the newspaper was a primary vehicle, and as I recall from my own conversation with him years ago, catalogs, a primary source of information about goods for the farm. He self-taught himself English.
Ovila read every word of the newspaper, as did his neighbors. They were very well informed. Made no difference who wrote what, agree or not, it was consumed.
It caused me to think about my German grandparents, whose now-former farm has been my preoccupation for the last two or three years.
Being male, my focus was on Grandpa. Their country mailbox was full of paper: the weekly newspaper from LaMoure; the Jamestown and Fargo papers; the Farm Journal; catalogs; on an on. And they were religiously read. People like my Mom occasionally contributed a piece of poetry; I have articles Grandpa wrote soliciting membership in the fledgling Farmers Union in 1928. And on and on and on.
Last year, while going through the abundant detritus after my Uncle died, we looked through a well constructed coffin like packing crate obviously used to bring possessions to the North Dakota farm from Wisconsin when Grandma and Grandpa moved there in 1905 (see photos above, and following). Among the precious contents (at the time), Grandma’s wedding dress, and assorted ‘stuff’, then to be saved, now of little interest, except in passing.

The Packing Crate revealing its contents, May 24, 2015.

In the box were two crumbling Dubuque newspapers, one in English; the other in my grandparents native German. Probably they had been delivered to the Wisconsin farm, and were handy when they were packing stuff for shipment to ‘Dakota. The articles in the English edition covered the waterfront (photo above); I’m sure the same was true for the German edition. What is certain, every page of each of these newspapers had seen many eyes. (Grandma and Grandpa married Feb. 28, 1905; he, his brother and his cousin came west first to build a house and such; Grandma came about six weeks later. The crate likely carried her belongings.)
Fast forward to today, August 3, 2016.
Those old newspapers, with readers whose education seldom was past 8th grade, were astonishing pieces of literature.
Today’s small town newspapers, like the LaMoure Chronicle, carry on the tradition of the past. They are a treasure to be savored.
But now we’re in the “Twitter Generation”: news by headline. I don’t need to define that any further. We can pick our own particular bias, and pretend that it is not only the only perspective that matters, but that it is the only perspective. We know that’s not true, but…. Our collective narrowness, made possible by infinite organs of “communication”, serve us ill. I think we know that, but it is easy to deny this reality.
Today far too many of us choose, freely, to be uninformed, EXCEPT to confirm our own biases. Our Elders had less means to receive and share communications, but in many ways they were much better informed and prepared to participate in a civil society than we are.
We are not at our best, these days: watch the political polemics. Hopefully we’ll survive our collective and intentional ignorance particularly of other points of view.
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