Friday I was at a meeting of the Roseville MN Optimists (Roseville Optimists ).  I’m not a member, but came as a guest, interested because the program was a group of Ukraine students, here for a short visit under the auspices of YouLEAD (Youth Leadership Engagement and Development Program: YouLEAD.

This was a large meeting – over 100 of us in attendance.  We were assigned to tables, and my ‘next door neighbor’ for lunch was somebody I didn’t know.  Mark and I were of the same generation, shall I say.  Two retired guys….

We’ve all been to many meetings like this.  In our brief time together, Mark and I found out the tiniest snippets about each other.  In his case, his career was in city management, part of the time in the small city where my own office was for 10 of my staff years; also my Minnesota “home town”.  We didn’t know each other then – no reason to – but I remarked that a colleague friend had, I thought, a brother who’d been a Minnesota City Manager as well, and I verified that later.  Mark knew of him, but he’d come to Minnesota a bit later.  Small world….

In the same 24 hours, I watched the League of Women Voters televised Q&A of six candidates for two city council positions up for election on Nov. 5.  There are eight candidates on the ballot; the other two didn’t show for whatever reason. All of the six I viewed presented themselves very well, and all seemed to be accomplished people, with track records of community engagement.  I’m pleased with how my city runs, and I didn’t say any of them who I’d consider a liability, so I have a quandary, still,  which two will get my vote.   I’m sure I’m not alone.

Then, of course, came Springfield, Ohio.  I need not say more: front page news, a mayor in the spotlight, doubtless a City Manager working in the background to deal with a community crisis, which has become a national item of news and a political crisis as well.

In the course of about 24 hours – a day – I’d come across the simplicities and the complexities of living in our society.

It’s a bit like driving a late-model car these days.  The driver assumes everything: that the car will run efficiently, and start, of course, and that there will not be a flat tire, or an accident, or anything else interfering with a climate controlled journey from here to there.

In the background, always, of course, is a backup team to try to manage imperfections and disagreements.

In our town, it is a Mayor and City Council who receives flak, probably, about most every grievance.  And because there are over 80,000 of us – larger than Springfield – these problems need to be shunted over to somebody, probably the City Manager, whose job it is to figure who, and how, to resolve whatever the issue might be.

We are a nation full of unsung heroes, and we too often forget this.

Back at the meeting, four of this years visiting students from Ukraine reflected on their five weeks here.  They are the third group I’ve seen in person, starting with the first in 2022 – the year Ukraine was invaded.  They all have represented their country extraordinarily well.  One of them, from Lviv, was at our table.  He said he knew four languages, and his English was very good.

Another at our table was a young woman, an American, involved with YouLEAD.  Awesome young person.

At the beginning of the session, another Ukrainian student, who’d been here for the first gathering in 2022, and who’d sung a song for us at that gathering, sang the Ukrainian National Anthem for our group.

Is there hope for the future?  Absolutely yes.  We were all young once, and among us, then, were leaders like these kids are today.

Thank you.

25 years ago – it was April 20, 1999, I was returning from a meeting and a bulletin came on the car radio about a school shooting in Littleton, Colorado.  I paid attention: my son and family lived in Littleton.

The day and week unfolded.  The incident was at Columbine High School. I had no idea where Columbine was, but ultimately found that it was little more than a mile from my sons home.  At the time, my granddaughter was Middle School, so there was no direct connection, but the incident was by no means abstract to this commuter 1,000 miles away.

Some time earlier I’d made plane reservations for about a week of hiking with siblings in Utah, and fortuitously had scheduled a stopover to visit my son and family enroute home the next weekend.

So, about May 1, I was with the family as we slowly trudged up “Cross Hill” in the rain, to see the memorial crosses raised to remember the dead.  (‘Cross Hill’ was basically construction residue, and from its summit, Columbine. below. was easily viewed.)  Two of the crosses had been sawed off – the person who put them there, had also put up crosses for the two killers, both students at the school.  Giving them a cross was an outrage, to some family of victims.

It was a dismal, rainy day.  Nearby, Robert Schuller of the then-famed Crystal Cathedral in California, came up the soggy slope, separate from the rest of us, with a crew of assistants.  I gathered he was doing some video for use in his television ministry.

Back home, May 4 – National Teacher Day – I talked to teacher union and administrators in Anoka-Hennepin School District.  An unexpected part of the talk was about my recent experience.   I wore the same clothes I’d worn on Cross Hill.  I still have them hanging in a hall closet….

*

Fast forward to yesterday at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia.  Four dead this time, two students, two teachers, nine injured.

Once again, thoughts and prayers.

School shootings have become so routine that I doubt Winder will get much more air time, as Columbine did so many years ago.  There have been hundreds of school shootings in the last 25 years.

Ironically, in my most recent post, September 2, I was remembering when I was 18, in 1958, including this: “There was not even a thought about school shootings.”   This tragedy has a particularly personal dimension: two of my daughters are educators working with 14 year olds and others in schools, today.  Doubtless there are many conversations going on.

Have we learned anything since Columbine?

I think it was in the year after Columbine that Charlton Heston made his famous “cold, dead hands” comment at the Convention of National Rifle Association.  The decision was, in effect, “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead”.

This is not a time to be silent.

EXTRA CREDIT:

Coincidentally, a couple of items ‘crossed my desk’ which indirectly relate to this conversation.

Yesterday, came a link to a 1978 commencement speech at Harvard by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn .  I printed out the 16 pages, read them, went to the  “Reflections on Solzhenitsyn’s Harvard Address” from October 26, 2020, and also looked up Solzhenitsyn’s wiki-bio.  This is not light reading.  Respectively, these are 16, 17 and 31 pages.  At the end the 1978 speech is a link to Solzhenitsyn’s own personal reflection on his1978 speech, June 7, 2018,

Solzhenitsyn was 59 when he gave the speech; and it was in the second year of President Jimmy Carter’s presidency.

Secondly, also yesterday, came a provocative commentary on Artificial Intelligence and its role in the present and future.  “What Happens when the bots compete for your love?”  by Yuval Noah Harari

The reality is that each and every one of us ultimately make decisions on these things, in large part by who we select to be our leaders.

If there is interest, I’m willing to do a specific post on these writings with contributions from others who actually read each of the articles.  

COMMENTS:

from Laura: Thanks so much, Dick. Please pick up the book The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. Anyone who cares about the young people of our world must read it! Just tremendous.