This is post number 2002, and the first I’d encourage you to bookmark and come back to once in awhile this summer.  (Yes, June 1 isn’t quite “Summer”, and not quite “school’s out” in most places, but it’s after Memorial Day…and June 1 is easy to remember.)  I hope you at least scroll through this, and perhaps wander back once in awhile when you’re looking for something to watch or to read.  Especially the last paragraph on this page.  My list is in no particular order.  Just notes to myself this morning.  Here we go:

1. Like you, I have other friends.  Recently there was a short exchange between three of us, including this, about assorted political conflicts, one to the others: “Trump will run as anti-war, as if civil war doesn’t count.” Profound. Needs to be inserted in the left’s memes, over and over and over again. Alongside a boatload of others. Simple, memorable phrase(s). More later…maybe…
2. A must read is my friend, Jim Nelson’s,  8-page commentary about the Great Peace Race post WWII.  If you ever are dismayed about not being able to make a difference, read this.  Curt Brown’s column in the June 2,  2024, Minneapolis Star Tribune is about this topic, and Jim is the one who brought this to Curt’s attention.
3. Another long-time friend, Marion Brady, just celebrated his 97th birthday, and wrote an essay about his 73 years in public education which can be read here and is about public education.  You will find Marion a serious man with a career long serious mission and great professional credentials.
4. Early in May I did a post on the topic of Law Day.  It is here, and includes an excellent booklet issued by the American Bar Association in 1959 for perhaps the first Law Day in the U.S.  .
5. A while back a nephew of mine, Sean, sent around an excellent video of the conundrum of energy and climate in the contemporary world.  The entire program is linked here.  I liked the program because it provides much food for thought regardless of point of view on the climate crisis.  Sean is one of those young people we all know who is and will continue to make a big difference in his world.
6. A few weeks ago I wrote some personal thoughts about my Catholic Church. of which I’m a life-time and not always happy member.
7. Earlier this week I was invited to an introduction to Optimist International,  which is a “sibling” of groups like Lions, Kiwanis and Rotary.  The main speaker was 88 years old, founder of a large chapter in a twin cities suburb, and the pitch was for a need for optimism.  His audience were civic leaders.  Thanks to my former and also retired colleague Don Berger, who’s a regional representative of the national organization.
8. Earlier in the week, I had collaborated with a good friend facilitator in a Kiwanis “Golden K” (retired) organization in another suburb.  That group gathers each month and its mission is, according to a member,  “all of the funds that we raise for our club go to the support of children.”  It’s members include many retired professional people.
9. A week ago a family friend took time to do family photographs.  Mike is a successful businessman, and an accomplished photographer as well.  I learned that he is Vietnamese, and he was the only survivor in his family, all the rest  killed in the fall of Saigon.  He was an infant, raised in an orphanage, and later adopted by an American family after the war.  He is taking his daughter to Vietnam later this summer.
10. Today’s Star Tribune had a column by a retired Judge who I am privileged to have met.  He writes about perspective.   Here is a pdf of the article: Bruce Peterson June 1 2024.  He has walked the talk for many years.
11. Grandson Ryan has taken an active interest in the never-ending story of the JFK assassination in 1963.  It gave an opportunity to watch, with him, a program he recommended on YouTube, and to do a followup with him from my own perspective 61 years later.  Here is the program.  It was an opportunity for communication across generations.
12. A short while back, Christine, another retired colleague, sent a video of her St. Paul community chamber orchestra remembering the atom bombing of Japan at the end of WWII.  There are two excellent videos, here and here, the first comments by Orchestra members, including Christine.  I plan to send this on again at the time of the anniversary of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, August 6 and 9.  Christine’s e-mail with the links: “The piece commemorates the horrors of the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the internment camps here in the US, and the rebirth of hope and life after these events“.
13. I’ve been trying to reconnect with relatives I’ve lost track of and in process came across a two hour webcast of an interview with Ian, who I’m quite certain I travelled with to the Philippines in 1994 when he was a teenager.  (His Mom and sister were also along, and I was traveling with them.). Life moves along, and Ian has achieved some deserved recognition as a producer of TV ads for Mountain Bikes in California.  I found the webcast interesting and instructive.  Here is the link.  The entire program is about two hours.
14. A short while ago I had lunch with a friend, Louisa, who I know from peace and justice work whose passion is the Forgiveness Project.  I am a strong supporter of this initiative.
15. Even more recently, Christine, from Paris, returned to the cities with an update on her documentary, EN AVANT L’ETOILE DU NORD OU LA JOIE DE “VIE”, long in preparation, about the French in the Midwest.  I have seen the film, both the 2023 and 2024 editions, and it will be available more broadly in the near future.  (The French in America are numerous and relatively little known.  Here for some reading if you wish.)
16. In the May 25-26 Star Tribune labor historian wrote a long commentary “90 Years after the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike”.  You can read it here: Peter Rachleff May 25-26 2024.  In the article is a link to programs related to this era in Minnesota.
17. I have done a number of posts relating to Ukraine and Israel/Gaza.  Probably the best starting point if the post for Feb 16 2022 for Ukraine; Oct 8 2023 for Israel/Gaza.  Use the search box to find other references.

Finished for now.  Thank you for reading  all of this!  And even more thanks if you decide to check out one of more of the items noted.

Like you, I am a single individual, and I have come to identify “America”, my country, in terms I know personally – family, friends, community writ large, the people I actually see in many contexts, daily.  It is through this network that I identify us, and my assessment is that with all the problems, we’ll do okay IF we elect to participate.

My personal optimism about the future is based on a generalization I once heard from a peace activist hero of mine, Verlyn Smith.  Verlyn was a campus minister in the American west during the Vietnam War.  Initially, he was not particularly interested in the protests, but as they took root with his students he became more engaged.  I was at a program where he was receiving an award for peacemaking and he offered one comment I’ve never forgotten:  in his experience, he said, he observed that even in the worst years maybe 2% of the students were actually involved in the protests, but they were more than enough to make a difference.  Think that is true for anything in our lives.  It only takes a few committed individual to achieve change.  It’s up to each of us.

(I do follow politics closely, and I will have more to say along the way, probably mostly after both the Republican and Democrat Conventions later this summer.  In the interim,  learn all you can and make sure you and others register and prepare to vote well informed for your preferred candidate for all offices.  A good starting point: Heather Cox Richardson for June I.)