At the season….

My handy-dandy computer calendar reminds me that today is Passover, yesterday was Good Friday, and tomorrow is Easter…also April Fools Day. Today is the second full moon of March, a “blue moon”.

We were supposed to be at the edge of a band of heavy snow to the north of us – seems to have been about 2” where I live.

The snow mountain (see end of post) which I promised our neighbors, wintering in Arizona, would be gone by the time they come home April 4, was declining, but “Lossen Peak” (named in their honor) will probably still be there five days from now, as we struggle to stay above freezing.

Of course, Easter is very early this year. I recall an Easter blizzard in this area, in late April, years ago.

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It is a a stretch to come up with a “happy days” message this year. But there are bits and pieces, including the following:

Yesterday, our good friend Joyce, born and raised in New York City, sent along a really excellent blog post by a friend who “was my grade school classmate”. You can read the post here. It is about Passover, and personal relationships among people of different nationalities and religions.

And, on schedule, at the Vernal Equinox, a faithful friend sent her usual collection of favorite poems, along with a note to all of us on her list:

“Peace, and blessings of green and growing things to you…feels like we should be seeing crocus any day now…despite what March seems to be spitting at many of us.

An odd challenge this year, trying to pull together some poetry for what is generally an exuberant season of return of light and color… because so much of the surrounding world mood is so dark. [Her offerings :2018 Spring Equinox]

I did find a pretty heavy poem that I am including as a separate attachment, a compromise that puts the lift & light of the season on different pages from it. But that “Look Out” poem by Wendell Berry–included in a 2005 collection (Given)– feels too descriptive of the present moment for exclusion. Note, though, that it does start with the loveliness of spring, moves to the darkness beyond, then adjures resistance, so… BerryLookOut

Here in MN, we’ve seen lots of geese, robins, red-winged blackbirds, grackles, and the goldfinches are starting to show faint tinges of color near the shoulders… Great horned owls are finally on their nests (ie, stopped hooting, kind of late this year) and the local fox was yowling at night about 3 weeks ago (driving the dog berserk, as the fox sought to interest a vixen…?)

Sandhill Cranes are at peak northern migration in Nebraska at their staging grounds on the Platte, and I tune in to the Rowe Audubon Sanctuary Crane Camera daily for a bit of cacaphony from the several hundred thousand birds there… yikes! Some have also been seen in southern MN” here, (always an ad first)
(More info on the migration here and here.)

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I come from rural stock, from a place where winters were rough.

Spring time was a time of optimism…and hard work. The fields, or the gardens, did not yield fruit without effort.

Best wishes at this season.

Lossen Peak, March 6, 2018

Nearing success, March 29, 2018

Setback, March 31, 2018

Easter in North Dakota, 1905

On February 28, 1905, my Grandmother Rosa Berning married my Grandfather Ferdinand Busch at Sinsinawa WI. They moved to Henrietta Township ND after their wedding. Their first Easter as a married couple was April 23, 1905.

Here’s an old card sent to them sometime in the early years of their marriage.

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Easter postcard early 1900s, kept by Busch family.

1905 was in the boom time for settlement in Dakota. North Dakota became a state in 1889; and railroads became the way to travel greater distances. Branch lines facilitated settlement in small towns far from main lines. Nearby Berlin got its depot about the same time the Busch’s arrived.

There was no local church until 1915, and it is possible that their first Easter might have been a rough 10 mile buggy ride to LaMoure. Church was important in their lives.

A treasure kept at the old farm was a bundle of over 100 letters written to the Busch’s in 1905-06 from their kin in Wisconsin, and others. In 2011 I compiled the letters into a book, “The Berning and Busch Letters 1905-06”, on file at the North Dakota Historical Society, Bismarck.

This morning I re-read the first few pages of the letters to get a sense of how it was, that first Easter on the prairie, for the 24 and 21 year old groom and bride.

The earliest letters were all from Rosa’s five sisters at home: Lidwina, Bertha, Julia, Celia and Kate. Brother August was also at home but didn’t write.

The letters indicate that Ferd and his brother Leonard, and relative John Terfruchte, who was a carpenter, came first, likely with an emigrant car, which included two cows, Spotty and Ruby; four horses, two of them named Jim and Jerry; and a dog Bruno. One horse was apparently injured enroute and had to be put down.

The home families contributed the animals.

The first tasks were to build shelter for humans and animals. This was apparently accomplished fairly quickly, perhaps with local help. Both bride and groom came from long established homes, and the beginning had to be trying, in many ways.

About a month later, probably during the last week of March, Rosa, her sister Lena, and possibly Ferd’s father Wilhelm, arrived.

The first letters from Wisconsin to North Dakota were written Sunday, April 2, all from the sisters and all very legible. One of them expressed worry about a March 28th tornado in St. Paul. Wilhelm writes on April 4, that he “came home [to Wisconsin] last Sunday” (April 2).

These were farm people, so the letters, all fascinating, were about farm things: nature, neighbors, activities back home in Grant Country Wisconsin.

Rosa and Ferd were the first to venture away from the neighborhood, and off to a strange new land, so there was, likely, lots of loneliness and concern on both ends. But, like young people in any era, they figured things out as they go. Their first child was born in January, 1907.

Grandma and Grandpa were married 62 years before Grandpa died in 1967, all on that rural piece of ground in south central North Dakota. Grandma died in August 1972.

Here’s to them, and the legacy they left in LaMoure County, and with their 9 children, all but one of whom lived to adult age, each leaving their positive example to follow.

Happy Easter.

Kids, being the change….

Today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune had this full page ad:

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Minneapolis Star Tribune p. A5 March 26, 2018

Much of this mornings Just Above Sunset was about Saturday in D.C.

I have just a few comments. (At the end of this post, some comments received about the earlier “Monarchy” post….)

I did not join a demonstration on Saturday. I thought this most appropriately a young people’s day, and it turned out wonderfully so. Going from home to a meeting in Minneapolis I drove by St. Paul and there were streams of young people on the bridges over my road, I-94, their demo just ending. The news spoke clearly for itself.

After Feb. 14, I noted that Parkland could well be, for todays generation, the 2018 Kent State (where 4 young people were killed by National Guard at Kent State University anti-war protest May 4, 1970.)

The message needs to go out to everyone, through everyone, that winning this fight (and many others) is possible, but it will take lots of stamina and creativity and willingness to break the established pattern of doing things, including playing by the rules established by money and traditional power.

Long ago I adopted something of a personal mantra “patience and persistence pays”.

Mostly, we tend to follow the dominant powers rules, and the result is predictable.

When the power people get into maintenance of power mode – using their particular means of exerting power – the task can seem impossible. But the tried and true works only if the subordinate group allows itself to be dominated.

So, for instance, people in power have learned over time that it is easy to simply wait out the opposition. Few in any “upstart” movement have the stamina to follow through, and power knows this. The NRA knows it has the time and the money to control the legislative conversation. BUT, legislators need more than anything else to be reelected, and if NRA PR and money becomes a liability to them rather than an asset, change can and will happen.

To change the conversation, the conversation needs to be changed by someone, and it can now be the kids, who will, after all, reap the benefits or the consequences of what the older people are now doing. The most heartening part of Saturdays demonstrations in Washington was that the speakers were only the kids. Adults not welcome on the stage. And the national and international response was extraordinary.

Everything else I have to say is superfluous. There is a lot of talent and determination out there, and a major election is less than seven months away.

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Feedback from The American Monarchy:

from Addie: Amen.

from Onder: Thanks for sharing. It seems to me it is not democracy but liberalism that failed us. Spread of liberalism should have been accompanied by strong high level (UN and others) as well as self-governing local structures. They are, and have been for many years, not respected and ineffective. Is all we can ask from, say UN, monitoring of what happens somewhere in the world? Will it ever have a voice for justice and peace? Will it ever have an organizing capacity to coordinate, not military interventions, but advocacy for justice and large scale humanitarian help? Recent tragedies are so numerous to list.. Rwanda, Rohingya, Bosnia, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Palestine… Without such organizing capacity to act, the field is left for evil few to wreck havoc on humanity. Vulnerable minorities can and do organize around principles to bond together or look for ways to build coalitions, but until majorities can organize around principles, we are left with watching fear merchants and charlatans turn a small group of ignorant people into a loud majority leading us into a national suicide Lincoln talks about.

from Marie: Thanks, Dick. Scary thoughts. I appreciate your research and sharing.
Alert, we must stay– and have conversations about this.

from SAK: Great post Mr Bernard, thoroughly enjoyed it!
Lincoln was incredible especially in that speech. It brings to mine the fall of the Hittite empire (here).

“The hieroglyphs revealed the name of the last Hittite King, his final war and more importantly the enemies he fought against. The archaeologist at last could learn the name of the foreign power that finally brought down the Hittite Empire, but the enemy turned out not to be foreign at all, the Hittite Empire was destroyed by civil war.”
I visited the site of that battle Kadesh between the Hittites & the Egyptian Pharaoh Rameses II – that was one of those battles that determined the history of entire regions. Nothing much remains to witness to the slaughter but not far from there the Syrian civil war raged about 3286 years later.

As Someone said history does not repeat but it rhymes.

Concerning “Back in those days, France was mostly the kingdom of Louis XIV and had essentially eliminated the Protestant Huguenots” I saw a French film “Saint-Germain ou la négociation” based on a Belgian novel by Francis Walder. It was very moving and showed, aside from negotiations over power, the effect of these religious wars on real people.

from a long-time friend: I liked the Christian Chaos chart. I recall writings about Martin Luther and the creator of the Episcopalian church traveling to Moorish Spain and marveling about how much better off the Christians were under Moorish rule than they were under the control of the church throughout the rest of Europe. These were the writings of the Biblical Archeologists. I didn’t recall any writings about Anglicanism. Can you elaborate on that for me and the head of that movement?

On another note, you comment about us freely electing a faux-King. We didn’t. He was elected by the Electoral College. The Electoral College and the movement to repeal it would be a good subject for one of your blog write-up.

The American Monarchy

For most of my adult life, I have made a practice of active citizenship, including following and participating in politics, though never an active interest in being a “politician” (which, generally in our past, has been an honorable profession).

Today we are in very dangerous times in our country. We freely elected a faux-King, a pretend -Emperor, and nobody in the assorted hierarchies seems to have figured out how to rein him in. Too many of us “drank the koolaid” (Jimmy Jones, for those who remember….)

It occurs to me that a retrospective might interest some readers.

I’m French-Canadian on Dad’s side, and by definition that’s Catholic in origin, coming to what became Quebec between 1617 (first known ancestor in North America) and 1757 (the last patronymic migrant ancestor; England defeated the French at the Plains of Abraham in 1759).

Back in those days, France was mostly the kingdom of Louis XIV and had essentially eliminated the Protestant Huguenots.

Last Saturday, I attended an interesting talk about the good old days of French Catholicism, and afterward sent some brief comments to others I knew who had attended. If you are interested, they follow, essentially unedited.

France 1517-1759:

I did some pre- and post- reading about five items: 1) Catholic Popes of old Quebec time (1535-1759); 2) the three French Estates General (clergy, nobility and the rest….); 3) the French and European Dynasties – Louis XIV and the rest; 4) the Protestant Reformation (1517) and 5) the French Huguenots. The attached Kings and Popes001 and wikipedia articles [Estates General, France; Huguenots] will give at least a good beginning background for anyone wanted to pursue further.

Basically (it seems) the monarchy seems to have been its most dominant during the French-Canadian time. And thereafter, of course, came the first French Revolution (1789), Napoleon and all the rest. I was surprised to learn that Charlemagne was actually Germanic, not French! I knew William the Conqueror (Norman) brought French language to English nobility; that the current Royal Family in England is basically German.

The French structures carried over to Quebec, of course. The Church and Nobility were “tight”, and the Reformation [1517]brought troubled times, still apparent 500 years later. (I still have my 1955 Baltimore Catechism where there was much said about the superiority of Catholicism over the numerous Protestant pretenders. Page 21 had a chart headed “CHRISTIAN CHAOS (Simplified)”):

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Christian Chaos, in the chapter “The Voice of History” in Understanding the Catholic Faith “An Official Edition of the revised Baltimore Catechism No. 3” . 1954

I don’t think there was a single word about Jews or Moslems.

Of particular interest was an aside about the suggested “schisms” of Abp John Ireland. Ireland never made Cardinal, largely, I would guess, because of his drumbeating for “Americanism” here. It didn’t fit the tenor of the times in Rome; perhaps he was not a good team-player. Of course, Ireland was trained in France; and had a great fondness for French-Canadians as witnessed by the side altar at the Cathedral to St. Jean-Baptiste. He was a Chaplain in the Civil War and moved easily with the movers and shakers of the day.

Concluding thoughts:

For the peasants and bourgeosie – the vast majority of the population then and now – the kings never had much to recommend themselves; nor the nobility nor the official church. Mostly there was an addiction to spiritual and temporal power. I say this as a lifelong Catholic. There were plenty of sins committed.

About a year and a half into the reign of King Donald the First, hopefully sufficient eyes are being opened so that we don’t repeat earlier disasters.

I close with a item sent along by Madeline March 18 – a memory from a Facebook post A Facebook originally posted a year earlier, March 18, 2017. Here is the originating link to Lincoln’s total speech.

“On January 27, 1838, Abraham Lincoln spoke to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois on the dangers facing American democracy. Lincoln was only 28, so it’s unlikely that many in his audience had him pegged as a prophet. But 23 years later, when the Civil War began, his words proved as prophetic as I believe they are today:

“At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? … Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined… could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a Trial of a thousand years.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

Lincoln did not anticipate the global reach of nuclear warfare, but his point remains sound. If American democracy fails, the ultimate cause will not be a foreign invasion. It will happen because “We the People” become so fearful of each other, of the economic, cultural, and security threats we believe to be posed by “the other” — and so dubious about finding a way forward while remaining true to democracy’s values — that we empower a fascist “strong man” who promises to make us “great” again. This is one way for a democracy to “die by suicide,” an act we seem to be contemplating at this very moment.”

The F Word: Stories of Forgiveness

Saturday night we visited a rather remarkable Exhibit, “The F Word: Stories of Forgiveness”. All details can be read in the New Release, here: F Word- Stories of Forgiveness. The venue is at Modus Locus, at the corner of 35th St and Bloomington Avenue S. in Minneapolis MN.

The Exhibit is here through April 17.

General Schedule: Mondays Noon – 4:00 pm, Tuesdays 9:30 am – Noon, Fridays, 4:00 – 7:00 pm,
Saturdays, 2:00 pm to 8:00 pm and Sundays 2:00 – 5:00 pm. Also by appointment – contact Ephraim (612) 382-9477 or Louisa at (612) 290-8291.

The Exhibit is remarkably simple. There might be 15 banners in all, each with a brief story, presented as here:

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Posters at the Exhibition Mar. 17, 2018

Each banner most often featured two people: the one(s) forgiven, and the one who forgives.

One is caused to think “where do I fit into this picture?” We all do….

A few hours before we attended the exhibit, I had a short e-mail exchange with a good friend, Donna. She had written with a very simple request, but with a far too short timeline. (Me) “Short notice! I’ll see what I can do.” (She) “We just found out yesterday…” So it went.

This morning I saw Donna and husband Rich at church, and she and I bantered a bit. (She) “I ask for forgiveness.” (Me) “Nope.” Of course, we were both in on the joke between us, and Donna will read this post as you are, and likely comment. It was a tiny thing, of course.

But how often do we let small things fester, and as they fester they become more and more magnified, however insignificant.

An example (one of many) comes to mind from about 2007. Somebody gave me a copy of the book “The Shack“, then new, today, still very popular.

I was smitten by the book (now also a film) – which is, in essence, a forgiveness story. So I let lots of people know about it.

What struck me was the response of the few people who didn’t like it, and told me so. The general response: “I just can’t forgive _____”, usually somebody who had wronged them in some way, sometimes a long while ago. From the outside, the complaint didn’t seem to amount to much, but living within it apparently gave their personal grievance a life of its own.

“The F Word” uses huge examples (Rwanda genocide; violence in northern Ireland – those sorts of things). Somebody killing someone else’s son, or brother or sister.

The stories are minimal, but gripping, and each draws the reader in, and perhaps even tempts the visitor to let go of some of his or her own baggage.

I encourage you to see the exhibit if you happen to live in Minneapolis-St. Paul area. If not, make contact with the coordinator, Louisa Hext, whose contact information is above.

The Stoop and the Postcard….

A few days ago a friend mentioned that she hasn’t seen many blog posts from me lately. It’s true: I’ve been on-line less. Part of it is my wordpress has for some reason been cantankerous. Another, though, is a bit of disspirit. We are at a very dangerous time in our history as a nation, and too many seem to have the attitude, “What, me worry?” (Alfred E. Neumann, Mad Magazine.) We have an autocrat in chief; a Republican party controlling Congress that enables and exhibits enabling behavior that in the days when Alfred E. Neuman was born (1954) would have outraged that same party – coddling Russia and the like.

We’re in strange times. Just Above Sunset catches it this morning: The Old World Now Gone.

But I am an optimist, and I’ve had something of a mantra throughout life thus far that “patience and persistence pays”, and I’m not inclined to quit. So, at the end of this post is a bit of optimism from my state’s Attorney General, sent out a few days ago, and before that a couple of pieces of nostalgia from times preceding mine. Just some things to think about.

The Stoop and the Postcard:

Recently I came across two seemingly unrelated items: a photo I took of a door stoop in Norma Township ND in Dec. 1999; and a postcard sent to my grandmother in Henrietta Township ND in 1911. I offer them to encourage reflection about a country that was.

Stoop at the Anderson Place, Norma Township ND Dec. 1999.

This was the entry to a country farm home where many children were raised about 100 years ago. My first wife’s mother was one of these, and this thus represents, now, five generations of Americans. All of us have our stories, our own stoops (that piece of iron on the edge – anyone who grew up on a farm, especially, knows what that was for – to at least put a dent in the farm dirt and manure from the barn….)

The Depot, Eagle Butte SD, 1911

The contents of the postcard are below. Here is a pdf of the letter: Eagle Butte SD003

The postcard contents.

This was a card about relationship, the story never to be totally told. Grandma, then, was 27 years old, with two youngsters, four and two (the youngest my mother). “D.A.L.” was probably someone who had moved, perhaps a nearby farm wife, probably someone who’d taken up farming there about the same time as my kin: 1905.

I leave the interpretation to the reader. They needed each other then. We need each other now, more than ever. And we won’t survive if we continue to cherish individualism and polarization and power, at all cost.

MN Attorney General Lori Swanson March 13, 2018:

“Leaders should inspire us to be our best. Our leaders achieve the most when they are optimistic about America’s destiny. The best leaders know that negotiated compromise, not unbridled polarization, is what moves America forward.

FDR’s optimism gave the country hope in the Great Depression. He observed: “The person with big dreams is more powerful than the one with all the facts.” And he described negotiation as follows: “For the young people here: practicality is a good thing. There are times where compromise is necessary. That’s part of wisdom. But it’s also important to hang on to what you believe.”

John F. Kennedy optimistically foresaw a moon landing, a Peace Corps to share America’s dream, and a new era of civil rights and individual dignity. To achieve progress, he noted in his inaugural speech: “Let us never negotiate out of fear; but let us never fear to negotiate.” He was quick to point out that “compromise does not mean cowardice.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. optimistically shared his dream that “…one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed…That all men are created equal.” He embraced optimism by declaring: “Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.” As to compromise, he said: “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.”

Eleanor Roosevelt, a great inspiration for the women of her time, said: “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” Eleanor had this to say about compromise: “We must be willing to learn the lesson that cooperation may imply compromise, but if it brings a world advance it is a gain for everyone.”

Mahatma Gandhi described human progress this way: “Human life is a series of compromises, and it is not always easy to achieve in practice what one has found to be true in theory.” As to polarization, he said: “A principle is the expression of perfection, and as imperfect beings like us cannot practice perfection, we devise every moment limits of its compromise in practice.”

Social and economic progress occurs in America when we embrace optimistic leadership and treat each other with respect and dignity, not insults and name calling….”

Korea

Overnight came an e-mail from a peace person, “strongly support[ing] direct talks between President Trump and the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.” The entirety of the e-mail is at the end of this post.

The comment brought back to mind a memory. I’m one of those odd ducks who don’t mind the label of “family historian”. Each family seems to have at least one of us, attempting to carry forward the story of their group, sometimes uncovering stories someone or other feels are best left untold.

And so it was that in my extended family genealogy I made an entry in the early 1990s: “William 3-13-33 to 3-14-54”, buried in a cemetery in Rockford IL.

I was 13 when William died, 900 miles from our home in Ross ND. So when I did the genealogy, I was a bit curious about William, but not enough to do any actual digging.

In 2011, William’s younger brother, Thomas, died, and his daughter passed along the usual information. It presented an opportunity to ask about William, so I asked, not really expecting a response.

Shortly came a letter from Lisa, born 1967. Somewhere I still have that letter, but its contents stick in my mind: William, the letter said, had been in the Korean War, and came home a very tortured young man. This particular night, March 12, 1954, William once again laid his memories and anxieties on his friends.

This night, one of these friends, probably frustrated by Williams constant laments, made a suggestion: “why don’t you just go home and kill yourself?

William took the advice, shooting himself at home, where he lived with his parents. Thomas, his brother, was 12.

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I have just now re-looked at the family history, and noted for the first time that William decided to end it all on his 21st birthday. I wonder how his bar friends reacted on hearing the news. For the first time, I connect a trip we made to Chicago in the summer of 1955, where we stayed overnight with the family. The wife was my mother’s first cousin, a year older, born a mile away in North Dakota in 1908. It was a small family reunion occasioned by a tragedy a year earlier. All I remember is that we arrived at night, greeted at the front door by Irene and Carl, the parents of William.

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It was 64 years ago, this very day, that William died in Rockford IL. I was 13, old enough to remember Douglas McArthur, but not the fine points of why the Korean Peninsula has been divided into North and South for all these past years.

Personally, if the Koreans will ever reach rapprochement, it will not be because of the U.S., China or anyone else; it will be the Koreans themselves who decide that enough is enough. The Winter Olympics presented an opportunity for a tiny start, and no one should expect miracles, most certainly not from Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un doing some deal of some sort (while at the same time, Trump is saber rattling to dismantle the multi-lateral negotiated nuclear agreement with Iran.)

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Here’s the rest of the overnight e-mail. For the record, I’m a U.S. Army veteran (1962-63) and a Veteran for Peace for many years…as a citizen, what do YOU think?

Veterans for Peace [a chapter]… strongly supports direct talks between President Trump and the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. It is time to end the state of war between the US and North Korea. The prospect of a US attack on North Korea leading to North Korean nuclear retaliation is horrendous. We are appalled at the negative attitude towards these direct talks between North Korea and the US now evident in much of mainstream media. We wish to remind everyone that it was “the experts” who led us into previous disastrous foreign policy actions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Direct talks and negotiations toward peace on the Korean Peninsula will be a positive step for all of humanity.

A Political Endorsing Convention: On Showing Up.

Saturday was a very long, exhausting, yet energizing day at the DFL Senate District 53 Convention in Woodbury MN. The final credentials committee report showed 233 registered delegates. By the time we adjourned at 7 p.m. We had endorsed candidates for two state legislative seats, passed 36 resolutions, and elected 18 persons to represent our area at the upcoming Congressional District and State DFL political conventions.

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The candidates vying for endorsement for DFL District 53A legislative seat, Greta, Tou, and Lila, Mar. 10, 2018.

“Politics” is easy to criticize, of course, and it is work to show up, to run for office, to even warm a chair for a long day indoors, where people argue about stuff, like procedures, and on and on. Thank goodness for those who show up, and persevere!

For the DFL (Democrats) this convention began with the Precinct Caucus in early February. I wrote about that meeting here. Of course, it began before the caucus, when volunteers did the necessary groundwork. “Showing up” doesn’t begin and end on election day.

In my Legislative District, we were blessed, truly, with three outstanding young people, all of whom decided to stand for nomination. They are pictured above. In the end – it took four ballots – Tou Xiong prevailed. He, and those who have preceded him running for any public office, know what is ahead. Getting elected is not a spectator sport.

I am gratified, truly gratified, that young people came forth to stand for office. It is their future, after all.

What I – We – can (and must do) is to provide support in the many ways that we can. No candidate is perfect, especially in this complex present day world.

I looked around the auditorium where we gathered, and there was, this time, what appeared to be a much larger than usual contingent of younger people, representing the diversity of this community.

Towards the end of the day we engaged in the time-tested process of selecting the 18 delegates to the next level – the sub-caucuses representing certain candidates or issues. I picked one, and one photo I took of the group more or less defined how I saw the folks who were at our Convention:

2018 Sen. Dist 53 Convention, Mar 10, 2018

How to summarize?

In my opinion, success involved lots of work and lots of cooperation.

We are in a society, now, where individualism and competition and winners are valued, and “losers” are discarded or dismissed.

Together we succeed. That’s the long and short…as I see it.

Thanks, Tou, Lila and Greta, for showing up!

March 5, 1968

50 years ago, March 5, 1968 – it was a Tuesday – the Hennepin County Board of Commissioners adopted “A Declaration of World Citizenship”. Three days later, on March 8, the Mayor and City Council of Minneapolis adopted the same Declaration. Less than two months later, on May 1, 1968, a large contingent of suburban Minneapolis mayors, as well as a who’s who of the political and civic leaders of the time, participated in a flag raising at what was to become Hennepin County Plaza.

The actual resolution is here: (click to enlarge, double-click for more)

Declaration of World Citizenship March 5 and 8, 1968, adopted by Hennepin County and the City of Minneapolis.

Details about the events can be read at pages 3-10 here: MN Declarations Mar 18003. (The other pages describe several other significant and analogous events, and you see names like Richard Nixon, and Lyndon Johnson….)

50 years later, today, we’re a country in turmoil, possibly about to see the beginning of a trade war, where positive relationships between parties are a dim memory, and our country is in a state of acute dysfunction. “We, the people” elected the leaders 50 years ago and in more recent times. What has happened to us?

1968 was a worried time, of course. Everyone with access should take time to view the exhibit “1968” at the Minnesota History Center this year.

February, 1968, was the Tet offensive in Vietnam; a display at the exhibit says that the last week of February, 1968, was the deadliest week in the deadliest month for American military losses in Vietnam. Martin Luther King was assassinated April 4, and on and on.

Still, the narrative in Minnesota, then, and other places was much as it was after World War II. We needed to figure out how to get along. War was a waste.

1968 now seems to have been such a quaint time. 2018 by contrast seems in so many ways so bizarre.

Getting to the Declaration in 1968 took citizen work. It was a years long process started by two Minneapolis businessmen, who in 1963 had seen in person the Tokyo government declare itself a World Citizen City. Tokyo in turn had followed the example of other cities, who had “mundialized”. Lynn Elling, one of the leaders, many years later recalled to me that when they took their idea to then-Minneapolis Mayor Arthur Naftalin, his first response was “what the hell is mundialization?” (See it described at the link.)

Of course, each declaration fit each communities circumstances. In Minneapolis/Hennepin County, 1968, the culminating event included raising the United Nations flag beside the American flag, fully in compliance with the U.S. Flag Code. Former Governor Elmer L. Andersen (Republican) gave what he considered one of his most important speeches that day. (page 6-7 at MN Declarations Mar 18003)

The most important subsequent events occurred in 1971 when Minnesota declared itself a World Citizenship State.

All were not happy campers, of course. Mayor Naftalins archive included 16 letters from citizens, 13 of them distinctly anti-United Nations; all but three of them from other states. The protests were vigorous, but hardly overwhelming.

The UN Flag flew at Hennepin Government Center for 44 years, until it was unceremoniously removed by the Hennepin Board of Commissioners March 27, 2012. They could, of course, fly any flag they wanted, but their excuse for taking down the flag – violation of the U.S. flag code – was false, and to this day I am not certain the chain of events which led to the flags demise (though I have some pretty clear ideas, I will not share since my opinions would likely be denied.) Four of the current Hennepin Commissioners were among those voting to take down the flag six years ago. They would know the story.

Two lengthy blog posts remain as a “file cabinet” for this issue, for anyone interested, here and here.

“We, the people”, in our democracy, have a huge responsibility: to elect those who serve us.

If we don’t like what we see from our government leaders at any level, we need first to look at ourselves – were we cause in the matter for change?

There exists today an international organization called Mayors for Peace. Take a look.